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The Certainty of the Kingdom 



The Certainty of the 
Kingdom 

and 
Other Sermons 

By 
HEBER D. KETCHAM, D. D. 

[Of the Cincinnati Conference] 




CINCINNATI: JENNINGS AND GRAHAM 
NEWYORK: E A T O N A N D M A I N S 



U8f?ARY of jONSRESS 
Two Oooies rfsceiVBu 

JUL I 1905 

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COPY Q. 



copyright 1905, by 
Jennings and Graham 



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Whose Ministry Led Me to Christ 



CONTENTS 

Sermon Page 

I. The Certainty of thk Kingdom, - n 

II. Our Sonship, -...-- - - 31 

III. The Will, the Pivot of Destiny, 46 

IV. The Price of Life, - 62 
V. Memory's Place in Destiny, - - 83 

VI. The Unveiled Vision, - - 100 

VII. Paul, the Preacher, - - -122 

VIII. Life's Procession of the Seasons, 138 



PREFATORY 



In the study of doctrine no definitions have 
seemed to us more confused that those stating the 
processes of grace in Christian experience. Yet no 
need is more urgent for the spread of the Word 
than that these truths should be clearly seen. It is 
with the hope, yes prayer, that the ways of God in 
the heart of man may be made more plain to the 
reader by this volume, that the eight sermons in it, 
like those rescued by the ark, are given to the flood. 

H. D. K. 



I 

THE CERTAINTY OF THE KINGDOM. 

"He must reign!' — i Cor. xv, 25. 

Heathenism and Christianity are both in the 
dusk, but on the antipodes, the one rolling into the 
night, the other into the sunlight. It is scarcely 
four o'clock in the morning of the world's Chris- 
tianization. Less than one-third of the race is nom- 
inally Christian to-day. Yet the ascending light 
grays the dawn, and soon will mark the coronation 
of the night with the first gold of the morning. The 
ages have been tardy in their response to the call of 
Calvary, but now the forces seem marshaling for 
the triumphant entering of the reign of the Re- 
deemer. The clocks of the nations have been strik- 
ing the hours, each, in turn, counting some new 
figure on the dial of religious thought. When the 
meridian shall be reached and the perfect come, it 
will be seen that all history was but the successive 
stages of civilization, whose morning hours in even 
time have contributed to the growing splendor of 



12 The Certainty of the: Kingdom. 

Christ's noonday glory. The translated refrain of 
every battle-hymn of the nations to-day is : 

"Jesus shall reign where'er the sun 
Does his successive journeys run." 

The Christian Church for half a century has been 
singing, "The morning light is breaking," but never 
till now has been able to sing it without the light 
of the torch. The lamp is now in the sky, and by 
and by will wait at the meridian. In the confidence 
born of the centuries of watching, but now jubi- 
lant in assured victory, let the shout go heaven- 
ward. The triumph is coming. 

The fact of our text, assured in its continuance 
until the death of time, and limited alone in its 
earthly permanence by the resurrection, is the most 
magnificent challenge to infidelity that has par- 
alleled the ages and put to flight the fears of men. 

Those who believe in the absolute certainty of 
the coming of Christ's kingdom will ally with it 
their fortunes, their feelings, their faith. It is with 
the hope that this end may be served and some new 
recruit may be gained for the army of the invisi- 
bles that the theme of the hour is presented. In do- 
ing so, however, we are not so much concerned with 
the unfolding of the character of Christ's earthly 



Th3 Certainty of the; Kingdom. 13 

reign as we are with the triumphant, assured fact 
of it. We, therefore, invite attention to three proofs 
of Paul's declaration, "He must reign/' 

I. The kingdom of Christ is assured in that 
God's moral government is poised upon the plan 
of redemption in Him, and can not fail without im- 
periling the Divine honor, pledged to redeem the 
race. 

Revelation has been progressive as well as man's 
understanding of it. It seems that God has suited 
his thought in all ages to men. He has approached 
them in the way they could best understand. He 
has brought the upper world to the level of the 
lower, willing to distort His nobler ideals that men 
might catch a glimpse or see the reflection of His 
glory. It is as though the invisible world was 
struggling to crowd its better nature into the very 
fiber of the visible — two worlds lying close, yet 
locked apart by the dullness of the physical. The 
spirit world has struggled to be eyes for the mate- 
rial, yet has found difficulty in locating the sight- 
less sockets. Every former method had been ex- 
hausted in preparation for the one in Christ. The 
successive stages of approach had all been com- 
passed, and now all intelligences await the outcome. 

See, in brief, the plans with men in the begin- 



14 The Certainty of the: Kingdom. 

ning years of even our own Revelation. In the ruder 
age, when men were less reasonable and more spec- 
tacular, God laid His hand upon a young Semite, 
Abram by name, who had native endowment and 
the capacity for faith adequate to the great task. 
Before that, as since, God had "sent the world to 
His great common school." It was the light of con- 
science. But with Abraham He started His first 
"high school" class in the centuries. Through him 
He would tutor the race to the reason of faith, and 
teach man to understand the prompting to purity 
already possessed. 

Ceremony in religion is a plan to prevent evil 
by keeping men busy. It is but the point of order in 
a parliament, to prevent riot, and good because there 
is not something better at hand in direct communi- 
cation. Yet ceremonial worship was sanctioned of 
God that moving humanity might at some angle 
come into line with the flash of Revelation. 
Through it the keener minds have, in truth, caught 
sight of a nobler realm, whose movements the visi- 
ble was endeavoring to imitate. 

God, who has used the approachable side of 
humanity in every age, even condescended to be 
known by the ancient Jew through a priesthood 
and sacrificial system, a moving tabernacle, a gilded 



Ths Certainty of the Kingdom. 15 

temple, an unstable ark, or through symbols as 
meaningless in themselves as the flashing of light 
from the twelve stones in the "breastplate of judg- 
ment" on the Ephod of a priest. 

Without some material proof men. were unwill- 
ing to trust their inward ability to know God. 
Moses must be startled into attention by the flaming 
bush, before both feet and head could be bared on 
holy ground that the voice of God might be heard. 
Elijah needed the sword of the lightning in the 
hand of prayer, that he might cut off the head of 
the false fire-god, Baal, before its devotees could 
see the true God. The three Hebrew children were 
wrapped in a burning shroud before the "form of 
the fourth" could be seen among them. Samson 
bowed between the pillars of Dagon, and Daniel 
walked the den of the beasts, that both heathen and 
Jew might know God. 

Not signs alone appeared, but Revelation took 
refuge from defeat in the dream at night and the 
vision by day. Following the miraculous signs to 
Gideon, it required the barley loaf in a Midianite's 
dream to confirm confidence in the voice of com- 
mand. It took the dream of the king and Joseph's 
interpretation of it, to open the dungeon of Egypt, 
and make possible the preservation of the Canaan 



16 The: Certainty of the Kingdom. 

pilgrims, and through them the lineage of the "Lion 
of Judah." Isaiah saw the vision of Jehovah in the 
temple, and when the angel took the coal from the 
altar to touch his lips he received his life commis- 
sion. Peter heard God speak when the net was thrice 
lowered. Joshua accepted the leadership of the 
host when he saw before him the angel with the 
drawn sword. Abraham communed at his tent door 
with the divine messengers and believed the prom- 
ise, and Jacob wrestled all night till the break of 
day with the angel that he might secure the blessing. 

God has allowed the casting of the lot to prove 
His leading, as with Israel at Ai, or in the :choosing 
of Matthias. The lot is a mute prayer to the Deity, 
and becomes a crime when prostituted from wor- 
ship for selfish ends, as though a man would use 
God to further a gambling passion for undeserved 
gain. 

God used the untaught prophet to declare His 
will. The emotion of a prophet was better than a 
vision or dream, the flash of light, the burning of a 
furnace, or the control of a beast. It was God's 
voice in the beginning confidence of a race. These 
preparatory forms for the final revelation were 
needed, and are even yet in the stages of individual 
life, as each for himself must in turn journey from 



The; Certainty of the Kingdom. 17 

savagery to civilization. In the "fullness of time" 
the perfect came. "God, who at sundry times and 
in divers manners spake in times past unto the 
fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days 
spoken unto us by His Son." Personality is the 
nearest possible approach to humanity. There can 
be no higher form. No revelation besides could ever 
be devised so to influence men. It is the approach 
of intellect to intellect, affection to affection, life to 
life. We speak it reverently, but God has so pivoted 
His plan upon the truth in Christ that if this form 
of approach should fail, the whole moral universe 
must go into wreck. 

In the wider sweep of the world's thought the 
religions of all nations prepared the way for the 
revelation in Christ. The ancient Semite in the 
Valley of Mesopotamia taught the Eminence of 
God, and through the Jew, his noblest scion, pre- 
served God's oneness to the world. The Egyptian 
taught his Imminence, and distributed the thought 
of God through nature into infinite variety. The 
Greek sought his Immanence, and pleaded that God 
and man might dwell together. The ages were 
weary. The religions had exhausted themselves. 
The nations were eying each other. It was the 
"fullness of time," the hour of the world's confessed 



1 8 The; Certainty of the Kingdom. 

failure, as well as the culmination of the Divine plan. 
It was in such an hour of the world's history that 
Christ was born. He gathered into Himself the 
prophetic hopes and fears of the race. He came, 
and became the world's Redeemer. He sat- 
isfied the triple demand of the world's 
thought. He reaffirmed the oneness of the 
God of the Semites, satisfied the variety of the 
Egyptian in the Trinity, fulfilled the hope of the 
Greek in showing God incarnate, and promising to 
dwell with man forever. He turned away from 
the wreck of heathen thought, stepped to the van- 
tage ground of its trained intellect, and, by adding 
the Divine to the stature of a man, lifted faith arm's- 
length into the light of God. Yes, even better, He 
stooped to put His shoulder underneath the lowest 
stratum of human life, and rising in the grandeur of 
His Divinity has been lifting the lost world up to the 
throne of God. 

The Revelation in Christ is the flashlight from 
the top of the highest mountain. Better still, it is 
the light coming over the crest of the range from 
the bosom of God. It is "the light that lighteth" 
the world. Through personality we thus enter the 
realm of the supernatural. As certainly as God 
said, "The government shall be upon His shoulder," 



Ths Certainty of the Kingdom. 19 

the coming of Christ's kingdom is the vindication 
of the mighty concept of God in the world's re- 
demption. Unless Christ's kingdom succeeds, God's 
character fails. At the suggestion of such a possi- 
bility reason rocks, and the foundations of thought 
tremble. To what could God or man ever turn if 
the Christian revelation fails? "There is no other 
way under heaven or among men." "But thanks 
be to God who giveth us the victory through our 
Lord Jesus Christ." The plan of the moral universe 
itself is a pledge of the incoming of the kingdom. 
It will not fail. May it soon come in power to the 
world ! 

II. Our second proof of certainty lies in the 
personal character of our Leader, for great leader- 
ship is the supreme proof among men of coming 
victory. 

Let us briefly look at Christ as He appeared in 
His human qualities. We have no likeness of Him 
left us. For that we are grateful, lest we might 
worship an image. There are two interesting de- 
scriptions at command, attempting to represent the 
way men remembered him. One is given by 
Epiphanius, discovered by Tischendorf, and one by 
Publius Lentulus, a Roman officer. They summar- 
ize His appearance as a man of tall stature; ven- 



20 The: Certainty of the Kingdom. 

erable countenance, such as to inspire beholders with 
both love and awe ; auburn hair, quite abundant, and 
beard full; His face round and ruddy; His eye- 
brows dark and not highly arched ; His eyes brown 
and bright; His aspect terrible in rebuke, placid 
and amiable in admonition ; cheerful without losing 
gravity; one never seen to laugh. Yet all descrip- 
tion fails, just as the emphasis upon the childhood 
of Christ belittles our conception of Him. 

True greatness lies not in appearance, but in 
character; not in facial nor physical form, but in 
the hidden depths of the spirit. Let us look at him 
as He approved Himself among men. He walked 
from His first sermon in Nazareth to His last pul- 
pit on Calvary, outwardly clad in peasant garb and 
inly robed in human passion. He congratulates at 
the wedding, commiserates at the tomb, loves the 
friendship of Bethany, is jostled and scourged, is 
weary and must rest, needy and prays, is a man 
among men. But look again. No policy is ever re- 
tracted, no mistake ever made. He forgives, but is 
not forgiven; is unrepentant, because unsinning; 
innocent, but not weak ; firm, but never vindictive ; 
self-governed and beautiful in the balance of all 
manly qualities. Himself, drenched with the sor- 
rows of others, the friend of the unfortunate, He 



The: Certainty of the: Kingdom. 2t 

stood impitied even by His followers in the hour of 
His crucifixion. Conscious of His mission, and 
beset by the crowd, the friend of the mob, he is un- 
checked by praise, unmoved by fear. No trace of 
self-compliment ever furrowed His face, nor sign 
of wavering ever muffled His voice. In the en- 
forced isolation of His greatness, He overawed 
men by the undefined quality of loneliness, com- 
muned with angels in their infinite flight, and by 
the concealed strength of perfect character was 
fitted the colossal leader of all history. 

He was able to control men. See Him, sur- 
rounded by His early bodyguard. Twelve men 
circle His ministry. Peter the impulsive, John the 
ardent ; the two brothers of greatness, Andrew and 
James; Philip the seeker, Bartholomew the guile- 
less, Thomas the melancholy, Matthew the tax- 
gatherer, Judas the tax-lover (the only one not a 
Galilean), James the less, Lebbseus, and Simon the 
malcontent. They were fishermen, tax-mongers, 
and "quondam zealots/' untaught and unhonored. 
They seem at first like the lean kine of Pharaoh's 
dream. Yet the raw material was good. What a 
vindication of the Savior's judgment of character 
and management of men, that these, with one ex- 
ception, in less than three years, through personal 



22 The Certainty of the; Kingdom. 

contact, not only learned to stand the test in the 
hour of trial, but caught a view of the eternal in 
the face of their leader! What a tribute to His 
posthumous leadership that these men could be 
wrought by the fires of persecution into a band of 
determined, deliberate heralds, the most unflinching 
of historic heroes ; and as time passed devotion be- 
came more ardent. 

What grasp of intellect that analyzed sin, de- 
fined redemption, and gave to the world the only 
perfect code of morals known to the race! What 
wealth of revelation that could rock to rest the visi- 
ble world in the lap of the invisible ! What mar- 
velous leadership that could rest the final outcome 
of his cause on the "inarticulate strength of con- 
scious character/' deliberately enter upon the con- 
quest of the world, and in perfect confidence be- 
queath the problem to the ages! If leadership 
means victory, the cause of our Christ must com- 
pass the earth. 

III. The great movements of history since 
Christ have successively marked the advancing 
stages of His power. 

They are like the waves of the incoming tide 
of the sea, each succeeding one marking the sand 
a little farther up the shore. Doctor Pierson said 



The; Certainty of thi; Kingdom. 23 

at the Ecumenical Council: "We ;can rightly un- 
derstand history only as we come to know it as His 
story/' Before the advent the object sought was a 
perfect statement of faith. Since then it has been 
the application of that faith to the problems of the 
w r orld. It is not our purpose, in proof of this, to 
present a detailed statement of the world's victories. 
We can scarcely flash into relief a single glimpse of 
the mountain range, whose peaks pierce the clouds, 
and whose slopes are the drill-ground of the cen- 
turies. 

The great facts of the Christian revelation are 
peace, personal liberty, associated rights, parity, 
and man's knowledge of God. These are the guide- 
boards on the wilderness road, pioneered by Chris- 
tian teaching, and being passed by the nations on 
their way to perfect life. They outline history, and 
give the marching plan for the centuries. Though 
only in part accomplished, they prove the ultimate 
sway of Him whose unerring thought has thus far 
been able to move the world. 

The Gospel declared peace when the whole 
world believed in war. I am aware that thus far 
the history of all great movements, that men love 
to rehearse, has been written in blood. Yet the vol- 
umes even now would exchange sizes, if the 



24 The Certainty oe the Kingdom. 

achievements of peace were rehearsed with the same 
zest as the stories of war. The carnage of history 
has simply been the rioting passion of a retreating 
or conquering army, looting as it fled or took the 
field. The love of war is but the remnant of the 
beast in men, and is unsanctioned by the teaching 
of Christ. Had zealots been more reasonable, and 
the apostles of peace more like their Master, who 
can tell how history, unstung by the vices of war, 
might have wrought changes as noiseless and un- 
sullied as the turning of night into day ? The Gos- 
pel is the conquest of the sunlight, not the storm. 
It has built itself, not with trowel nor pen into mor- 
tar or manuscript, a monument or memorial, but 
into the throbbing thought of men. It has become 
the living principle of a practical world, nor ever 
designed force to free the race. Some day peace 
will be universal. 

Personal liberty has been the watch-cry of the 
pickets along the advance guard of Christian civili- 
zation, nor has a chain ever been forged, nor a 
fagot lighted, by the sanction of the rightly inter- 
preted Word of God. There is not a slave-block 
bared to the sunlight to-day where Christian teach- 
ing dictates. Wherever in savagery it remains it 
is doomed to burn under the focused rays of Chris- 



The Certainty of the Kingdom. 25 

tian light. England with her colonies, Russia with 
her serfs, and America with her slaves, attest the 
growth of Christian liberty, that will yet set the 
whole world free. Growing liberty wrested from 
Bling John Magna Charta, sent Cromwell with his 
iron will to demand for England civil liberty, lifted 
honest John Bright and Wilberforce into the love of 
civilization, set on fire the eloquent tongue of 
O'Connell, and made Lincoln at home among God's 
chosen heroes, the foremost man of his century. 

Governments are becoming freer, wrongs are 
being righted, and the world growing better every 
hour. Though all men will not unite in one gov- 
ernment, nor in one form of government, yet the 
spirit of freedom will find its way into every code 
among the nations, and America prove to have set 
the model for the world. 

Christianity would dot the hills and valleys of 
every land with schools and colleges, develop man 
in moral symmetry, make him feel of kin to his 
Maker, and send him shouting "liberty" on his way 
to eternal life. 

When Christ came He flashed the thought of 
associated rights upon the :clouds of despotism, and, 
though long delayed, we believe the world is now 
moving toward His ideal. The sphere of human 



26 The: Certainty of the: Kingdom. 

action was defined by the Savior in the burning 
light of related rights. No man now "can live to 
himself." It is the day of applied religion. Men 
to-day who follow Christ must not be content with 
"taking up a cross," but must "go about doing 
good." That maudlin sentiment that wastes itself 
alone in impractical tears is to-day banished of 
right from good society. We want the tears now 
that can float a ship, the rivers of pleasure that can 
carry the commerce of Christ's unseen kingdom to 
the doomed of the race. In Christian countries the 
social and economic problems are cast to the sur- 
face and must be solved. The adjustment of rights 
between capital and labor is but another step on 
that ladder from mire to manhood that Christ's 
teaching would build. It is not bread, nor blood, 
but equality of opportunity that men want, and will 
have. The Church is called to introduce the 
"Golden Rule" into the practical life of the working 
world. No industrial system is Christian, nor can 
it be final, that makes possible the unequal gain of 
equal brain as seen in the organized "trusts" in 
Christian countries to-day, whether of steel or beef, 
oil or sugar, or in the hundred and one "get-rich- 
quick" schemes that flame the passion for gain, or 
in the gambling "in futures" in a New York or a 



The; Certainty otf the; Kingdom. 27 

Chicago, where designing men wager a fictitious 
wealth on the movements of the Almighty. Here 
is the most intense and practical field for the 
Church, known to peaceful civilization. The spirit 
of the opening years of the century is the nearest 
approach the world has ever made to the thought of 
Christ in the rights of men. We rejoice in the signs 
of the times. It is either a nation going to Cuba to 
free the wronged, or sending the light to a distant 
Philippines to help undo the evil of a false Chris- 
tian teaching. It is a President (Heaven protect 
him!) advocating a returned indemnity to build 
schools in China, or the world's representatives 
pledging fealty to a Hague Tribunal. The wider 
application is the one more easily made and must 
be first. Afterward will come the minuter adjust- 
ments in the affairs of our industrial life. It begins 
with the top, as the sun does with the mountain 
peaks, but will gradually illumine the valleys and 
the whole world be ushered into the day. In all 
the questions of associated life it is the wealth of 
human rights that is in the balance, and God is 
watching the tipping of the beam. 

Christ's ideals of purity in religion, in personal 
character, and His teaching of a personal knowl- 
edge of God, were like waifs on the highway when 



28 The Certainty of the Kingdom. 

first given to the world, but now are accepted 
throughout Christendom, and will yet possess the 
race. 

Wherever Christ's teaching has gone cruelty has 
departed from worship and human life been made 
sacred. No longer is the sacrificial stone deluged 
with human blood as in Mexico, a wife burned on 
a funeral pyre as in India, or the honor of woman- 
hood offered on a heathen altar as was done in an- 
cient Greece. 

It has been hard for man to ascend from cere- 
mony to self-conquest, and live purity rather than 
to simply chant it. Yet we believe, despite all de- 
pression to the contrary, that there never was a 
time when principle was more valued, love better 
defined, faith more firm, and man's knowledge of 
God more direct than to-day. Through pride, 
parade, and man's love of power, religion has fared 
ill through the ages, and has oft had need of being 
rescued from the hands of its friends. Yet never, 
in the world's history, were so many men, in the 
average of opportunity, true as at this hour. There 
have been great and periodic revivals, so that the 
Church, like the pendulum, has returned to purity, 
and each time the hands have marked a higher fig- 
ure on the face of the clock. The moods of re- 
ligion are simply the manifestations of tempera- 



The Certainty of the Kingdom. 29 

ment, nor do they touch the truer life. One age is 
more meditative, another more demonstrative, and 
another more practical. Are the less demonstra- 
tive converts of to-day, because younger, less true 
than those of years ago! How could the child, 
born on the journey to Bethel, be as emotional at 
the altar as the penitent Jacob, seeking Bethel a sec- 
ond time? Outward emotion is one of the fashions 
of religion. It is simply a question whether it is 
setting in or out; yet the inner fervor of love, the 
loyalty to principle, the direct knowledge of God, 
these are as abiding as life itself. We believe the 
world is moving toward a great revival, and the 
power of love that has graced the life of far-off 
Australia will yet circle the world. At this very 
hour the angel is troubling the waters, and Wales 
is stepping in. Will not God give America a ;chance, 
too? Let us get to the edge of the pool! God's 
love is free to all alike. It is as the refreshing dew 
of the night on every land, revealed in the early 
sunlight of each succeeding hour of the earth's 
round. All nations alike shall yet rejoice in His 
life. The spirit that renewed Rome, transformed 
the tribes of Germany, France, and Spain, molded 
Anglo-Saxon England into power, bridged the sea 
and lifted America to the vantage point of history, 
will not "fail nor be discouraged till Christ shall 



30 The Certainty of the Kingdom. 

have set judgment in the earth," and the waiting 
isles have seen His law. Each age is set to carve 
some new feature on the face of the world's civili- 
zation, and that face shall yet bear the likeness of 
the face of God in Christ. 

The fiat of the Almighty has gone forth, that 
every knee shall bow and every tongue shall con- 
fess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Let the faltering 
take courage, and the defenseless be armed. The 
man of Nazareth is among His followers. His 
kingdom will never fail. He who declared the 
supremacy of mind, and taught man to stamp his 
foot on the clod of the hill-top, will not fail to make 
the earth His footstool. He who used a carpen- 
ter's plane and a builder's hammer to frame a hut in 
Nazareth, will not fail to build a house in the Eternal 
City. He who pleaded His cause in power at the bar 
of justice and redeemed the race, will not fail to 
make good His claim on the consciences of men. 
He exalted character to the place of power, made 
Himself its "flying goal," taught man to love God, 
and made a perfect man the climax of the universe. 
The Man of Galilee has been girding Himself 
through the centuries for the final conquest, and is 
now on His way to universal power. Let men 
everywhere plan for the coronation ! And may His 
kingdom speedily come! 



II. 

OUR SONSHIP. 

"As many as received Him, to them gave He power 
to become the sons of God." — John i, 12. 

Ths great question of the ages has not been, 
Does God exist; but, How may man be conscious 
cf his Maker. No system of thought nor definition 
of faith will ever hold permanent sway over the 
intellect, nor dominate the affections of men, which 
fails to make man's conscious relationship to God 
its central feature. In this day of "applied Chris- 
tianity," we are so concerned with battle-ships and 
parade drills in the militant Church that the dan- 
ger is the vital question back of all armaments may 
be forgotten, which is the soul's conscious relation- 
ship to its God. Methodism's rise was the resur- 
rection of experimental religion. It followed the 
Baconian method, and, by accepting known facts, 
built up, in harmony with experience and the Word 
of God, a system of belief whose unrivaled splendor 
has charmed the world. As Methodists, our herit- 

31 



32 This Certainty of the Kingdom. 

age of "experience" is not to be lightly cast aside, 
nor the field forsaken in the hour when the better 
part of Christendom is re-echoing the eali to con- 
scious godliness. 

Before building our cabin, let us clear away 
the underbrush. 

Our text sweeps the universe in its first stroke 
in the statement, "He came to His own," not to 
the Jews, but to carnal men, deftly declaring the 
impartial plan of the Son of God. It announces the 
need of purposed faith in the phrase "As many as 
received Him." It offers the bequest of "power to 
become" to every believer, and welcomes man to 
the opening gate of the :city of God. The word 
"power," here used, is not that inherent, divinely 
created Pentecostal ability, construed in the gifts of 
the early Church, promised in Acts i, 8 : "Ye shall 
receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come 
upon you." It is not the authority announced in 
the last of Matthew in the great commission, "All 
power is given unto me. Go ye, therefore." Nor 
is it the strength intended in Rev. v, 12, in the as- 
cription to Christ in the midst of the artillery of 
Revelation, "Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to 
receive power." It is rather that rightful claim 
which gives every honest seeker the absolute right 



Our Sonship. 33 

to a place in the family of God. We thus stand 
face to face with the assured and blessed Sonship 
of our text. 

Let us locate the province of this new life and 
relationship. 

The kingdom of morality does not define the 
vital fact of the kingdom of God. The Christian is 
moral, but the moral man need not necessarily be a 
Christian. When the young man came to Christ 
asking how he might gain eternal life, the Savior 
sounded the death knell of the moralist. He might 
have been a disciple, and possibly known as one of 
the Savior's body-guard in the ages, but is now 
simply the indefinite rich young man. When told 
to "keep the commandments," the assured answer of 
the moralist, "I have," did not prevent the Savior's 
piercing gaze from analyzing his thought. He de- 
sired to add God's kingdom to his own. Cutting 
with a single stroke through the shell of religion to 
find the kernel, Christ said, "Sell all and give," as 
much as to say, "Set your afifections," not upon 
money, but upon Me. 

The province of philanthropy is not the defini- 
tion of religion, though it may compass good citi- 
zenship. Paul said in his letter to Corinth, 
"Though," with martyr sincerity, "I bestow all my 
3 



34 The; Certainty of the; Kingdom. 

goods to feed the poor, and have not love, it profiteth 
me nothing." 

Ritualism does not define religion. The Savior, 
when discoursing upon the kingdom, dissected the 
unspiritual ritualist for the ages to view the hideous 
skeleton, and declared with the awful intensity of 
an offended Deity, "Except your righteousness shall 
exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Phar- 
isees, ye shall in no case enter the kingdom." 

Experimental religion lies not on the surface of 
the sea, but in the deep ocean's quiet, our hidden 
life with God. There is a conscious relationship of 
the soul with its Maker, which becomes at once the 
life of pleasure and the secret of power. If any 
doubt this truth, we ask him to stand in the foot- 
prints of the departing Nicodemus and take up the 
contention with the Son of God. 

It is not our province to-day to prove the Scrip- 
tural promise of Sonship. This we accept. It is 
rather to lay bare, if possible, the qualities of this 
new life, and make more plain the ways of God 
with men. 

Accepting the fact that "the kingdom of God 
is within," we seek to analyze the movements of 
the mind and affectionate nature when consenting 
to the new law of life. Faith does not contemplate 



Our Sonship. 35 

the eradication of either of these natures, but to 
aid them to right exercise and self-control. The 
processes of grace are not unnatural, though super- 
natural. Creeds are the effort to define in set 
phrase the changing inner life of man under the 
influence of grace. Men differ, so will their defini- 
tions. And even the same language varies through 
every new mental prism. How reasonable the re- 
mark of the gifted L. D. McCabe, when writing 
on the subject of holiness: "I found that all the 
light which I had previously received, whether from 
reading, instruction, or meditation, was inadequate 
to the demands of my own reason, and also to 
answer the numerous inquiries propounded to me 
by my discriminating pupils. Unsatisfied with all 
I had ever seen or heard in explanation of its un- 
explained mysteries, I sat down, not to reading and 
collating, but to patient and prayerful thought." 
We sympathize with the feeling so fully that, even 
when reading Wesley's "Plain Account," luminous 
as it is, we have wished he had used the compara- 
tive degree in the title instead of the positive. No 
man can fully define to another what to him the 
kingdom of God truly is. There are heights of rap- 
ture and depths of anguish — yes, even facts of com- 
mon experience — that are forever hidden, like the 



36 The Certainty of the Kingdom. 

night from the sun. They lie on the side of nature 
never laid bare to the gaze of men. We do well, 
however, to compare experiences, and, as best we 
may be able, draw our conclusions. 

The ground of the demerit of sin is the lack of 
perfect consent to the law of God. It is that inner 
dissent to the restraint upon thought and emotion 
that would deny them all exercise excepting toward 
the good. The vagrant soul, thus driven by the re- 
morse attendant upon purposed rebellion, knocks 
for entrance at the city's gate. It is not ours to in- 
quire to-day as to the steps that led it to leave the 
old life,, nor to explain the elements of conviction, 
nor to analyze the faith that makes possible the ac- 
ceptance of the new, but rather to note the facts 
that go to make up the real character of this new 
life upon which it enters. The mental and affec- 
tionate processes are unchanged in conversion. 
These processes are, however, now directed to moral 
instead of selfish ends, and the inner nature takes 
cast from the object toward which it is directed. 
There are seven facts of this new life which, we 
trust, will not only aid in the definition of our son- 
ship, but also lead some one into a better under- 
standing of self and into a more contented life. It 
is with the windows thrown open heavenward, and 



Our Sonship. 37 

with a devout prayer for light, that we would enter 
upon the statement. 

I. The first settled fact of this new relationship 
to God through faith, is the renouncing of every 
malevolent passion and the acceptance of God's law 
as an absolute and perfect guide. This is the life of 
principle. This binding law is found in the revealed 
Word and the Spirit's further interpretation of it. 
As the wanderer stands knocking at the gate, the 
keeper will exact the pledge of absolute loyalty be- 
fore entrance can be given, even to the most des- 
titute. Whenever one comes face to face with the 
demand of the new law upon both thought and af- 
fection, he stands at the supreme place of oppor- 
tunity in this universe. If he assents, by faith there- 
after in Christ, to live this life, the gate swings open, 
and he steps in. The act of consent is the one 
which crosses the threshold into the kingdom of 
God. This kingdom of principle is vital in the defi- 
nition of our sonship. It is the very hinge itself of 
the gate of entrance. Whether in torrid clime or 
frozen hut, in teeming city or deserted wilderness, 
in temple or cloister, the seeker steps into the favor 
of God in the very act of such decision. We £an 
not too strongly demand that every professed Chris- 
tian shall not only be free from profanity, adultery, 



38 The Certainty oe the Kingdom. 

idolatry ; free from complicity with the lie, the theft, 
the conceit of society, or the corner in the great 
marts of trade; but free from avarice, ambition, 
malice, deceit, and that horde of malevolent pas- 
sions that blister and blight and curse the very elect. 
Let every pretentious hypocrite, whose pious cant 
is belied by his vindictive or vicious life, be gib- 
beted on the scaffold of Christian respect. "Thou 
shalt not!" rings from every stone of the divinely 
chosen pulpit of Sinai, and the new law, the sound- 
ing-board of that ancient peak, sends it echoing 
through the ages to the final judgment hall. I 
would, even now, some one within this call would 
take the needed step. The ten thousand pleading 
tongues of mercy are crying, "Come !" "The Spirit 
and the Bride say, Come ;" while the inspired apos- 
tle, in the name of the Nazarene, flings this challenge 
of privileged sonship to all the world. 

II. The second fact is the one of conscious Divine 
power to live the new life. The knowledge of need 
with the upright in soul is as keen as the pang of 
hunger to the famishing, and the sense of help as 
definite as returning life to failing health. The 
doubter may ask, How can we be conscious of God 
with us? This no man can fully explain to an- 
other. As features upon the face, so words upon 



Our Sonship. 39 

thought may ill express the nobility within. Titles 
to farms are recorded in court records. The title 
to the inheritance of the kingdom of God is writ- 
ten in the deeper consciousness of the man who 
claims it. I may not be able to explain how God's 
Spirit touches my spirit; yet / know it. Nor does 
the explanation of that lie with the believer except 
when addressing the one who denies the possibility 
of all spirit impression. How one spirit affects an- 
other I do not know, nor am I called to explain; 
for the question resolves itself into the problem, 
How can any spirit be conscious of any other spirit ? 
The question is one of mental philosophy that lies 
at the door of any system that affirms a knowledge 
of spirit contact. A denial of this is only the right 
of the materialist, who is behind the age. He is 
only a monument, and we have been taught to be 
silent in the presence of the dead. How the impact 
of God's Spirit upon man's spirit can be known is 
beyond all philosophy to explain, yet to him who 
admits the testimony of his conscious inner life it 
is most blessedly true. Outward religion is the cir- 
cle, man's knowledge of God is the center. Nor 
has mind found a resting place until returning, like 
the dove to the ark, to the thought of the personal 
Consciousness of God in man. 



40 The Gertainty of the: Kingdom. 

III. The third fact we note is an inwrought re- 
pulsion for sin, and a corresponding love of purity. 
This might almost seem at first to antedate the con- 
sent to live the new life. When the soul stands 
knocking at the gate, the emotion is one of peni- 
tence. With every new reflection, conviction deep- 
ens. The storm increases, until the soul is drenched 
in the passion of remorse. Out of that hour there 
is born of the very lightning of the wrath of of- 
fended justice an aversion to sin, that strengthens 
with every new view of the life of purity. Yet in 
strict thought there is a wide distinction between 
the emotion of conviction, which is the revelation 
in us of what God thinks of sin, and the settled dis- 
gust in the soul for sin independent of its final pen- 
alty upon the guilty. The first precedes the new 
life; the second is the ever-present guardian of it. 
Sometimes we hear the earnest pleader rehearse his 
life of crime with such relish that the question arises 
whether he has ever truly repented. If God is will- 
ing to forget my sins, shall not I be glad to do the 
same? A soul genuinely converted to God hates 
sin and loves holiness. These two blessed facts at- 
tend the righteous in his journey of the years, the 
ever-ministering angels of help, till finally they meet 
like the cherubim over the ark, with wings touching, 



Our Sonship. 41 

but faces in opposite directions, looking back toward 
the world and forward toward God, while the She- 
kinah rests down upon the altar of the soul, and God 
hallows it in perfect love. 

IV. There is a province of motive, which alone 
gives quality to action. This is our fourth fact. It 
lies over life like the sun on this material universe, 
revealing every act to the eye of God. We are glad 
to believe that God judges men's deeds by their 
motives; not, as with men, their motives by their 
deeds. What a leveler of humanity this is ! A rich 
man may lay his millions upon poverty's altar, and 
thousands of ill-fed, cellar-housed weaklings walk 
into the sunlight. Yet if done for self-praise, the 
richness of his gift only abounds in the deeper pov- 
erty of his own spirit. On the other hand, if honest 
penury would lay its loving tribute at the feet of 
the Redeemer, the very breath of pure desire will 
become the angel of worship to transmute the cop- 
per of earth into the gold of the kingdom. It is 
not, however, for a single motive we plead, but a 
habit of motive that will settle into disposition. This 
is essential to the thought of purity. When this 
shall be an accomplished fact it will hallow the 
visible life and make it like the great organ, whose 
key-board presents a succession of endless combi- 



42 The Certainty o£ the Kingdom. 

nation. Each outward act is but the signal to 
awaken the note in the invisible world of worship. 
Every deed finds echo in the unseen, the visible 
awakening the invisible, two worlds in quick re- 
sponse, — the first the natural life of contact with 
men, the second the life of truer contact with the 
nature of God. The most sublime spectacle in this 
universe is an immortal soul struggling for purity, 
its motives gathered from the unseen, stifling the 
fires of passion, and hurling headlong the powers of 
hell. 

V. There is a kingdom of benevolent desire, 
which follows close upon the act of consecration. 
Not long since, while appealing to the unsaved to 
accept Christ, a man in the audience was deeply con- 
victed of sin. Starting forward, he sank down at 
the altar, trembling from head to foot, and cried for 
help. Soon the answer came. No sooner had the 
light broken through than he arose in his place, the 
tear of repentance cast through with the sunlight 
of his first faith, and, turning to his four compan- 
ions, led them all to Christ. This was the true im- 
pulse of a saved soul. The missionary spirit that 
saves the first soul that crosses its path is but the 
beginning of that world-wide sympathy that gives, 
and prays, and grapples the world to lift it into the 



Our Sonship. 43 

light of God, and is unquenched except in the re- 
demption of the race. In a semi-Jeremiah mood we 
ask whether the Church to-day has that same death- 
less anguish for the souls of men that gave the 
mighty swing of victory to earlier Methodism. For 
it we should pray and plead till salvation would 
grace again in power our altars, and a wayward 
race receive the new life of the Son of God. 

VI. No sooner will one enter this new realm of 
moral activity than a sense of absolute dependence 
upon God will be awakened. A single glimpse of 
the inexorable working of the relentless moral ma- 
chinery of this universe would appall the soul, un- 
aided by grace, and crush forever beginning hope. 
Fear would be its companion, and death its doom. 
But faith sees, in the center of all, the benign -face 
of a loving Creator, whose proffered help awaits 
the humble mind. To the one depending upon God, 
life becomes a series of triumphs. Every new vic- 
tory leads to greater confidence, and every accom- 
plished act to a more settled dependence upon God. 
That sense of dependence is the consecrated stand- 
ing ground of faith, the kneeling ground of prayer, 
the building ground of character, and the resting 
ground for the ark of Israel's God. 

VII. In defining the inner facts of our sonship 



44 Ths Certainty of the Kingdom. 

we have noted, in turn, the renouncing of passion 
and the acceptance of principle, the consciousness of 
Divine help, the repulsion for sin and love for vir- 
tue, the prompting of right motive, the benevolent 
desire, and the sense of dependence. We now 
come to the blessed consciousness of a Divine com- 
panionship, the contact with a person, the knowl- 
edge of a friend. This conscious friendship of 
Christ is the climax of our sonship in God. 

There is a sense of loneliness that belongs to con- 
templative life, when the soul reviews the facts of 
destiny, and sees the sublime tragedy of existence. 
Nor is any thinking mind exempt. In the hour of 
meditation man feels that he walks on the rim of a 
fathomless universe. One step on either side would 
precipitate him where reason would lose its reckon- 
ing. That sense of danger, that fear of falling, that 
awful foreboding, that wreck of hope, is the most 
exquisite torture of which a well-meaning soul [can 
be continually conscious. Not only does the guilty 
soul, as is recorded of Thomas Paine, fear to be 
alone, but with the good the craving for eompanion- 
ship is a passion as deep as life, as abiding as eter- 
nity. How tender is confiding childhood! When 
weary of play, or perplexed in study, the problems 
unsolved, the reason for toil unknown, the evening 



Our Sonship. 45 

gathering or the storm brewing, just to nestle in 
her arms or look in her face, and see love mirrored 
in mother's eyes ! Her cheek and your cheek played 
"hide and seek" with the lips, each in turn love's 
playground. You did not need her, but you just 
wanted to know that she was there. That was all. 
The artillery could roll, and the earth rock. While 
she held you, there was no fear. What are we but 
children grown? — no, growing? The sphere is 
wider, simply making our childhood greater. We 
must have Him with us. It is the resistless passion 
for friendship, divine, eternal friendship. 

The agony of repentance over, the touch of for- 
giveness felt, wrong repelled, right received, de- 
pendent, strengthened, the nature of God im- 
pressed, His presence known, — the perfume of a 
nearing paradise through the opening windows, — 
this is life, salvation, sonship! 



III. 

THE WILL, THE PIVOT OF DESTINY. 

"If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know 
of the teaching, whether it be of God, or whether 
I speak from Myself" — John vh, 17. 

Our text is a Klondike. You can placer-mine 
it, or sink a shaft. Whether you look in or around, 
it glistens with the gold of the Kingdom. The 
Savior came unheralded to the Tabernacle feast, 
walked in October odors among withering booths 
and shriveling men, scanned the devout, curious 
crowd with its malicious leaders, then repaired to 
the side room of the temple to set forth the claims 
of His kingdom of truth. 

He suffered in that hour the isolation of great- 
ness. His own brothers did not believe upon Him 
as the Son of God until after the resurrection. Why 
should they? He was their brother, and they were 
not divine. They knew Him. And to this day to 
know men makes them common. 

Our text announces four great related truths, 
46 






Ths WiUv, the: Pivot op* Dkstiny. 47 

to the last of which alone we ask special attention 
to-day. 

1. He declares that a man may know the "teach- 
ing/' by which we understand, in its wider infer- 
ence, all revealed truth is involved. 

2. Man may know "whether it be of God," that 
is the source of that truth; namely, its inspiration. 

3. The phrase, "or whether I speak from My- 
self," mirrors in its depths the Messiahship of Christ 
as the authoritative Teacher of God. Nor is the 
recognition of this simply of abstract nature, but a 
confession wrought out of the inner depths of an 
experimental knowledge of Christ's presence in the 
soul. 

4. The blazing sunlight from the Savior's face 
on the three mountain peaks of the text is the ex- 
pression, "If any man wills," and locates in man's 
consent the question of salvation. This brings us 
face to face with the fact that the will is the pivot 
of destiny. Human experience also proves that 
that pivot will be both tear-stained and blood-oiled 
before the soul will turn upon it to its God. The 
Savior declares that if any man wills to make in- 
carnate God's will he shall know in vital experience 
the inmost truth of our Christian faith. This is the 
most sublime analysis of personal salvation ever 



48 The; Certainty of the; Kingdom. 

left upon human record. With all the authority of 
the Infinite the Savior flashes the light of a coming 
world upon this mighty truth. Then, gazing in 
the divine ardor of His mission to all ages, over the 
heads of the motley crowd before Him, with the 
side room of the temple for His pulpit, the arches 
of the October heavens for His sounding board, He 
sends echoing through the centuries the eternal de- 
mand that men shall believe upon the Son of God. 
There are two sides to the great plan of redemp- 
tion, — one where God seems to do all; the other 
where man seems supreme. It is this, the under- 
side of the great problem, we now seek to study. 
The question is most vital, how shall I enter the 
kingdom of God? Then, when admitted, how shall 
I gain the divine help for the more complete domi- 
nation of my soul by the grace of God ? The creeds 
have told us how God dealt with men, and have de- 
fined beyond recall the process of personal salva- 
tion. Yet creeds are man-made, and therefore sub- 
ject to change. We believe in creeds, yet the im- 
mediate reasons for the emphasis of a creed will 
gauge both the form of the statement and the pecul- 
iar effect upon the believer. That which seems 
vital in one theological battle is unneeded armor in 
another. A £oat of mail turned the dart or dulled 



The; Wiu,, the; Pivot of Destiny. 49 

the spear, but of what use is it in turning a twelve- 
inch ball from a Krupp gun ? A crown is a symbol 
of power when on the king's head, but in a land 
of liberty it is only a brilliant jest. In strict truth, 
a creed can alone be known in the stress of like pas- 
sion with that which wrought it into form. Yes, 
even more, human definitions are so indigenous that 
it is a just question whether, when transplanted, the 
fxower can ever cast the same pungent perfume that 
the first bloom flung to its native air. The Articles 
of Religion of all Protestantism are set in the anti- 
Catholic mold. They were a rebellion against the 
sublime egotism of a would-be all-wise ecclesiasti- 
cism. That same urgency is not upon us now, but 
in its place the newer need, in the world-wide broth- 
erhood of united Christendom. In this new cen- 
tury we sometimes feel the need of the Church is 
a bicentennial resurrection of John Wesley, or a 
new statement of doctrine. Yet it is the same 
blessed power, the same salvation, the same mighty 
truth that re-echoed in the shouts of our fathers. 

The province of our subject lies not so much in 
w r hat holiness is, as how are we to attain it. The un- 
natural is no part of a perfect creed, although the 
supernatural is fundamental in it. God's first reve- 
lation to man was through human reason, nor does 
4 



50 The; Certainty otf the Kingdom. 

He ever violate, in the details of its specifications, 
the ground plan in the architecture of the moral uni- 
verse. Our definition of religion must be rational, 
or the thoughtful world will class the unnaturally 
supernatural as the superstitious. While we be- 
lieve in special acts made necessary by moral ends, 
yet we think of the accustomed divine power, not 
as given through what is termed special providence, 
but particular providence ; not a profligate use of 
divine aid according to spasmodic whims, but a 
momentary and ever fixed help to every man alike, 
if he comes into touch with the great center of 
power at any trolley-point of contact. In answer to 
that touch it will distribute in the soul in light, heat, 
and power. In the matter of salvation the spiritual 
forces are set in great and fixed lines of movement 
which must be appropriated by the will. 

The "school of necessity" has limited the will to 
prescribed lines. A less severe definition has lim- 
ited it only by impediments within the mind. 
Whedon justly denominates these as the freedom of 
the clock to strike. The fact is it must strike twelve 
when the hands point to twelve ; that is all it can do. 
But we contend that the will may strike ten when 
the hands point to twelve, or may refuse to strike at 
all. The will is supreme, either in assent or dissent 



I 



The Wiix, the Pivot o£ Destiny. 51 

from the other qualities of reasonable intellect. It 
turns on its own axis. The soul, by native endow- 
ment, may turn in recoil from the appeals of its 
Maker, or from every reasonable motive and judg- 
ment of the intellect or prompting of the affections, 
or may make the very pleasure of willfulness itself a 
motive of choice. It may pervert destiny till, help- 
less, it stands accursed at the bar of Eternal Justice, 
awful in its ruined grandeur, yet doomed through 
settled will to endless inward conflict, which is con- 
demnation, which is hell. 

The more we are in accord with the natural 
movements and exercises of human nature, the more 
we approach the divine ideal We believe the ideal 
of perfection is centered in man himself. In other 
words, the highest Scriptural idea of perfection is a 
perfect man, perfectly free to do as he pleases, yet 
free from penalty through perfect obedience to the 
law of liberty, which is the law of God. 

There is a province of our text where the will 
is related to knowledge, — "he shall know." Yet 
that knowledge implies, in its ultimate thought, the 
inner consciousness of the mission of the Son of 
God. We, therefore, more properly confine our 
thought to the question of the will as related to our 
self-conquest and our surrender to God. 



52 The Certainty of the Kingdom. 

i. The will is the responsible agent in overcoming 
temptation. No sooner is this statement made than 
we are confronted with the first broken bridge over 
which our armored-train would move in vanquish- 
ing sin. The drunkard is not able to will his refor- 
mation, the libertine his returning purity, the pro- 
fane his worshipful thought. Many a soul has 
wrought in the death-throes against long-established 
temptation until overwhelmed in shame, every nerve 
a firebrand and every pore a pleading tongue. Then, 
with renewed strength made desperate by unwilling 
defeat, the love of purity now curdled into the gall 
of self-distrust, the soul fired with abandoned hate, 
the awful menace of virtue against sin removed, we 
have seen that soul in the wild deluge of its passion 
fling itself full length against all that was good, and, 
shrieking in its awful moral delirium, fall back into 
the gashed and lurid grave of a moral hell. He is 
powerless now to stop the toboggan slide perdition- 
ward, which is but the relentless swing of penalty. 
But there was a time when he might have sent the 
cup and not himself hellward, and have said in the 
grandeur of heroic manhood — No! Objects of 
sight enter the mind unbidden. Choruses greet the 
ear unsought. Temptations flood the soul unse- 
lected. But the will may refuse to entertain the 



The; Wii.iv, the: Pivot of Dkstiny. 53 

unbidden, or converse with the unsought. The soul 
may be tossed helpless on Galilean waves, but the 
will may awake the sleeping Savior, who will com- 
mand the hounds of the sea to lie at His feet If in 
descending the mine I refuse the "miner's lamp," 
and despite all protests, use a tallow taper, when 
the accounts appear in the daily print I am properly 
numbered among the suicides. 

Proud, unbending, stubborn human nature, like 
the brakeman, heedless of the pendant guard-ropes, 
approaching the low arching bridge, will break it- 
self against the immovable bridgeway of the Eter- 
nal. Submission is the first and absolute demand of 
the new law. 

2. The soul may often will itself out of the 
immediate realm of evil. Weak human nature 
needs to exclude itself so far as possible from the 
field of temptation. How beautiful the prayer we all 
pray, "Lead us not into temptation!" The drunk- 
ard, when beyond the reach of drink, can extin- 
guish the fires of hell within him, even though, when 
he thinks himself within its reach, the lurid flames 
of the damned will again course through his aban- 
doned nature. A man can abide the fulfillment of 
his oath, though at the end of the time he seems 
absolutely powerless before his foe. 



54 The; Certainty of the Kingdom. 

3. The true secret of overcoming is deeper than 
the surface conditions. It lies in the inner, deter- 
mined purpose by the help of God to live a life of 
honor. Some time since I went into a bank in 
company with the banker, who showed me the new 
vault. He picked up a roll of bills marked $12,000, 
and put in my right hand. He then put $5,000 in 
my left, — $17,000 are a deal for a Methodist 
preacher to have in his hands at one time ! Think 
you there was any temptation to take the money? 
Possibly some one says, "No, for the law would 
then have taken hold of you." But think you that 
was the ground of not so attempting? As you 
would do, I would scorn the thought. Years be- 
fore ascending those bank steps there was a consul- 
tation and an agreement with my Maker in which 
I said, "Henceforth no dollar, not properly my own, 
do I desire." The question of honesty was settled 
long years before ascending those bank steps, set- 
tled in a quiet hour of communion with God. 

A man becomes virtuous when he consents to 
purity of thought, not simply life. He banishes 
himself forever from the forbidden realm of un- 
;chastity. He consents to the absolute law of virtue, 
— and temptation at once dwarfs to a cringing tow- 
ard before him. 



The: Wiijy, the: Pivot of Destiny. 55 

The blistering, blighting, damning crime of in- 
decision stamps the face with maudlin weakness, 
tunnels the constitution with the fires of disease, and 
wraps the soul in horrid remorse. The most revolt- 
ing sight in this moral universe is an immortal na- 
ture, made in the image of God, parading to the 
world the unconcealed penalty of its crime. 

4. The will gauges the extent of our surrender 
to God. 

No man ever failed to enter the kingdom who 
honestly said, "I will," even though through misun- 
derstanding he sorrowed as though his salvation 
were not, like mourning Jacob for Joseph yet alive. 

There has been great confusion in much of our 
evangelistic preaching, and, therefore, revival expe- 
rience, touching the method and result of the in- 
ward workings of Divine grace. Purity has seemed 
a material quantity, whose possession displaced na- 
ture, rather than a new activity of nature in its re- 
lation to sin, that required constant action to be 
maintained. The grace of sanctification has been 
urged as something different from the grace of re- 
generation, and as destroying nature rather than 
holding in check or directing the activities of the 
soul to new and proper objects. How to gain and 
then maintain a life of complete consecration has 



56 The; Certainty of the Kingdom. 

been the ill-understood question of the Christian life. 
It is Divine ability that saves, but the process of 
God's power in man's salvation will be through the 
accustomed abilities of the soul, central in which is 
the will. It is God who saves. But it is God sav- 
ing by enlightening through the intellect, inspiring 
through the affections, determining through the 
will. The passive condition of man's moral nature 
as related to salvation is the Calvinistic menace, 
masquerading in an Arminian garb, that has 
wrought havoc at many an altar of consecration. 
Sin and holiness are states in which the soul pur- 
posely lives, and in which the activities of mind and 
affection are exerted. While Divine aid must ever 
accomplish the change from the one state to the 
other, as well as keep in holiness when once instated, 
yet the will must act as though it did all, and exert 
its same power in the same inward process, but 
with new aim and benevolent purpose. The will is 
the shift-key that turns the current along the elec- 
tric wires of our mental machinery, whose incan- 
descent coils, laid by the foresight of Infinite intel- 
lect in the inner chambers of the soul, will be 
coursed and charged from the great central dy- 
namo, till the thoughts, motives, and affections will 



The; Wiix, the Pivot of Dsstiny. 57 

glow and radiate in beauty, the New Testament 
Shekinah. 

A careful analysis of the steps in submission 
will show that each new victory, helping in the sum 
of our perfect consecration, will follow directly the 
exercise of the will for that particular end. The 
soul theoretically might, but probably never will, 
gain in a single moment, at any altar of search, the 
full dominion of all carnal passion. It will as far 
as it knows to ask, but the asking is limited by the 
knowledge of need. It will conquer itself by inches, 
and be sanctified in steps, and not by one all-con- 
vulsive surrender to God. It is God alone who 
saves, but through the active exercise of man's abil- 
ities, and not in their passive submission. The soul 
is renewed in as many ways and times as there are 
separately apprehended departments of conscious 
activity. Such sanctification is not the even, grad- 
ual advance of the body when walking, but of the 
foot that stops and advances in quick process, for 
faith is always intelligent, definite, and instanta- 
neous in its action, and must be here. What the 
soul did at the altar was to pledge that every pos- 
sessed ability would be brought by it to the king- 
dom. Its purpose was as complete in the first sur- 



58 The: Certainty of the: Kingdom. 

render, attested in regeneration by the Spirit's wit- 
ness, as it :could ever be. The circle was complete, 
though the radius was short. The first newly found 
joy grew out of the consciousness of complete sur- 
render; nor can that purpose be more complete in 
heaven itself. By it the wanderer stepped into the 
kingdom. The soul, by God's provision and direct 
help, having compassed its aim through one su- 
preme, willful act into this beginning holiness, it 
now remains for it, by holy acts of this hallowed will 
to prostrate in turn every newly revealed ability at 
the same chosen altar of consecration. Thus, and 
only thus, will every separate Napoleon, whose con- 
quering battalions have again and again swept 
through the fields of the soul, reconquering and re- 
burning the signs of a new life, find its Waterloo. 

Is there one among us who dares testify that 
the will must not forever police the mind's inner 
powers, or that after the first supreme struggle that 
brought the "witness," he was not still harassed by 
a guerilla warfare, from whose undiscovered moun- 
tains the flying marauding bands swept down under 
cover of the night to devastate, and to retire uncap- 
tured, and to replenish their forces from the local 
rebellions against authority that arose in the sub- 
mitted provinces of the soul ! The soul will no 



This Wiiyiv, the; Pivot of Destiny. 5$ 

sooner have entered the new life of desire and de- 
termination than the lack of a confirmed habit of 
the new purpose will react, and, unless help shall 
come, the old habit will displace the new. This is 
the after-struggle of every new birth of the soul. 
Consecration waits upon our knowledge of need; 
nor do we gain victories unless we definitely seek 
them. The contest for perfection is repeated and 
definite. The first was for general consent ; now it 
is for definite self-conquest. One sees, for example, 
for the first time, the difference between indigna- 
tion against sin and anger without a cause. He 
did not know before as now what God requires. 
He sees in turn that envy, rashness, stubbornness, 
unhallowed ambition, and the allied hosts of sinister 
foes were unsubdued in the first proclamation of 
peace. The first great battle was for the dominion 
of the new law and was fought within the territory 
of the partially discovered soul. The combined 
army was routed and shattered. Yet each tribe and 
clan betook itself to its native hills, to await the 
issue when the will, conducting the Holy Spirit to 
the haunts of the bandits, should seek to join battle 
with them, and wrench from them final assent to the 
peaceful reign of the new law. He summons the 
ungoverned forces of his nature, and at the altar 



6o The Certainty oe the Kingdom. 

strips them* of armor, lance, and license, denies them 
forever the realm of ungoverned passion, and makes 
them take the oath of perpetual self-restraint. 

Some day he will see the need of a rest of faith, 
whose related influence touches and hallows every 
act of life. He had never before met the foe of dis- 
content in the open where battle could be joined. 
He weeps. He prays. He trusts. And there enters 
a hallowed harmony that seems like the music of 
heaven. 

Let us change our figure, and say that the first 
supreme purpose in conversion was the hub of our 
chariot wheel. The new lines of conquest will be 
the spokes, each of which is sent into place by a 
definite act of the will. The "rest of faith" will be 
the tire thrown round all in the expanding heat of 
agonizing appeal to God, and binding all the rest 
in firm consecration. The God-ward and man-ward 
sides will give us both wheels for our chariot, bear- 
ing between them the sustained life of godliness. 
To this chariot we will harness the two steeds of 
faith and love. Isaiah in the thirty-fifth chapter, 
throws up the highway in earth's wilderness. John 
in the Apocalypse flings wide the gate at the end 
of the race, to stand the shouting angels a regeiv- 



The: Will, the; Pivot of Destiny. 6i 

ing cohort before the throne — and heaven alone can 
tell us the rest. 

The Son of God stands gazing into the hearts 
of men, awaiting man's will in the redemption of 
the race. The sacred interests of two worlds de- 
pend upon it. He called from the feast. He ap- 
pealed from Gethsemane. He cried from Calvary. 
He commands from the throne ! 



IV. 

THE PRICE OF LIFE. 

"If by the spirit ye put to death the deeds of the 
body, ye shall live/' — Rom. viii, 13. 

Our text is both a grave digger and a herald of 
life. It says man must die, if he would live. The 
first is needed that the second may abide. The dirge 
precedes the declaration of life. In preparation for 
it each man must prepare his own shroud, purchase 
his own coffin, and furnish himself for burial. There 
is no pomp, no parade to distract the mind and make 
agreeable the doom. The friends may weep, if 
weep they will, without the gate. The chamber of 
this sacrifice knows no companionship. Each one 
"dies to himself." It is the sublime tragedy of sin, 
where each man dies alone ; and all who would truly 
live must pass through this chamber of death. But 
it is the Spirit of God that chants the requiem, 
calls to life, and that flashes the light of a new world 
into the risen soul. He who will follow the teaching 
of the text will arise, facing the east, with the sun 

62 



The: Price: otf LitfS. 63 

upon his forehead, and all heaven awaiting to escort 
him in the immortal journey. 

Sometimes when I have looked upon life it has 
seemed to me that the world is a great thrashing- 
machine. Some men are applying the power, some 
are feeding the cylinder, and some are being fed 
into it. The inequalities are great ; yet, as death is 
known as the great leveler in nature, so is the spir- 
itual death in the economy of divine grace. The 
one levels down. This levels up. 

In presenting this repulsive, yet magnetic, secret 
of spirit resurrection into the image of God, we 
would that this room might prove to be the slope 
of Hermon, where some expectant believer, who has 
trudged the mountain path to find the Son of God, 
may see Him transfigured in beauty. There are 
many who would be willing to die, that they might 
live, if only the journey to death was made more 
plain. How may I die, is as vital as who will help 
me to live. May the angel accompany us, yes, Christ 
be with us at this hour, and lead in the tortuous, 
torturing, yet triumphant path ! 

No man ever enters the kingdom of God who is 
unwilling to pay the price. But no man ever con- 
sents to the call of Christ, and takes up the cross on 
the Calvary road who can be barred thereafter from 



64 The; Certainty of the; Kingdom. 

the friendship of the Son of God ; and to know Him 
is life. Paul declares in Romans, in the very midst 
of that most magnificent argument in inspired 
record : "If by the spirit ye put to death the deeds of 
the body, ye will live ;" not shall live, but will live. 
It is not the determined purpose of a legal compul- 
sion, but the announcement of a conclusion that in 
the government of God is already assured, if the 
conditions are met. Ye then will live. With the 
assurance of such a prediction, we enter with hope 
upon the thought immediately before us. 

We are not to-day concerned with the definition 
of what the kingdom of God is ; nor is our inquiry 
alone into the nature of that first repentance that 
leads into life, but into the wider sweep of that sac- 
rifice which is essential to life, both at the begin- 
ning and in its continued course in the after years. 
Our task is the question of obtaining spiritual life. 
What is the price ? What must I do to gain it ? We 
would, if possible, ascend the stairway to the door 
of the temple, and though not expecting to enter, 
knock aright, that the angel of the covenant may 
assure us of our right to enter. 

The key to our text is the mission of sacrifice. 
In seeking to develop this thought we would view 
it in five different realms: Renunciation, self -re- 



The: Price: of Life:. 65 

straint, submission to the higher law, unselfish labor, 
and submission to the Providence of God. How- 
ever, before defining these realms of our surrender 
to God, we desire to note two things : first, the set- 
ting of our text in the argument; and, second, the 
method of our surrender. 

To know one you must know his friends. We 
therefore would briefly acquaint ourselves with the 
general thoughts preceding our text. The whole 
argument in Romans is like the mountain range in 
the moonlight. It marks in Revelation the line 
where earth and sky meet. Our text seems to stand 
where God and men commune. 

Paul's primary aim in Romans is not to teach 
salvation by faith, though that afterward, in the 
architecture of his argument, becomes the pillar 
supporting the very roof of the temple. It is to set 
forth God'-s universal purpose in man's salvation. 
He declares that all men alike may enter the king- 
dom if they will but believe. As he advances in 
the truth, distasteful to the predestinarian Jew, 
but most welcome to the less violent Gentile, he 
sweeps his artillery down from the mountains out 
on the wide-open field where he may join issue and 
give battle to every narrow instinct of human na- 
ture. The salvation offered is universal. Its re- 
5 



66 The Certainty of the Kingdom. 

wards are equal. Its penalties are impartial. Every- 
one must die who would live, and every one who 
thus dies will live. The universal implication of 
our text, in accord with the intent of the great ar- 
gument itself, is like a jeweled necklace around the 
life of the world. Thank God, "whosoever will may 
come." But wait! We are concerned in the added 
call now, whosoever will may ;come to death. Yes ! 
if he would gain life, he must come. 

Not only is the early part of the book of Romans 
radiant with the right of all to a universal oppor- 
tunity, but Christ appears as the universal Savior, 
with universal power over sin. How marvelous the 
declarations in the sixth chapter of man's absolute 
deliverance through Christ from sin. The seventh 
chapter is descriptive of an awakened, though un- 
converted man, until its closing verse, where the 
light breaks through. We wish that no division, ex- 
cept the punctuation of a sentence, separated the 
seventh and eighth chapters. The thought is con- 
tinuous. The freedom from condemnation is the 
direct result of the deliverance declared in the 
twenty-fifth verse, "I thank God through Jesus 
Christ our Lord, / am delivered/' Paul tells men 
the price of this cherished life and its manifestation 
in the first part of the eighth chapter, then runs to 



The; Price of Li^S. 67 

the top of the mast the banner of his triumph and 
shouts in assurance, "For I am persuaded that 
neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, 
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall 
be able to separate us from the love of God, which 
is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Just before this burst 
of artillery against the self-satisfied Jew, that con- 
cludes the second one of Paul's three great divisions 
of his argument in this book, our text appears. It 
is the key to the immediate victory through Christ, 
which climaxes His magnificent challenge to the 
unbelieving world. 

The term "body" in Paul's argument is an in- 
clusive one, that embraces both the material body 
and the indwelling mind in its selfish life. It is the 
carnal nature. It is the life, lived without the aid 
of the Spirit of God. It is man in his native state, 
unsaved, unsound, and helpless because self-cen- 
tered and faithless. 

2. The plan by which our "mortification," our 
living death, is brought to us is in the phrase, "If 
by the spirit," not the Holy Spirit, but your spirit. 
If ye put to death the deeds of the body ye shall 
live. The Holy Spirit is the sole power that makes 
possible this surrender to God. But it is not that 



68 The; Certainty otf the Kingdom. 

which the apostle is here endeavoring to declare. 
It is the reasonable working out of the forces of re- 
demption. It is the domination of the "body" by 
the mind. It is the reasonable subjugation of man 
to the claims of God. He says, If ye through the 
mind are willing to rule the body, ye shall live. It 
is the new manner of life, now lived through rea- 
sonable choice, and by the aid of the Spirit of God. 
He will be with us because we welcome Him. He 
will help us because we open the way. He will de- 
liver us because we lead Him to the dungeon's door. 
He will be a present Savior and live in us because 
we learn to apply the processes of his Spirit to our 
lives. 

This life of holiness is the most natural and 
beautiful possibility of this groaning, growing, re- 
splendent universe. Its salvation is of God, but its 
process is in man. So reasonable is it that the won- 
der is any can resist it. Nor do they so much in the 
intellect, as through the rebellion of the affections. 
They love lust and license, and therefore they will 
not believe. It is in the reasonable process of 
thought and self-mastery that Paul locates this new 
life of God. The world is a new world, not be- 
cause it is new, but because man's rule over himself 
is new, and, therefore, his use of it is new. Paul 



The Price: of Life. 69 

said to the Corinthians, "I strive to keep my body 
under;" or, more literally, I strike my body under 
the eye. I battle down the body with the mind, 
lest, after having preached to others, I myself should 
be a castaway. Having in mind this reasonable plan 
of submission to God, we can enter the mine of our 
humiliation. Our lamp is a safety. We need not 
fear. 

I. Renunciation. — Whoever enters the kingdom 
of God, or, having once been admitted, remains in 
possession of the secret of life, must renounce the 
world. This is death at once to all intrinsic sin. It 
requires no proof to you who are versed in the de- 
mands of grace, but lies alone in the province of il- 
lustration, to show that all flagrant sin must be 
abandoned. The antinomian is the one who curses 
the fairest truth of God with the foulest crime of 
hell. Drunkenness, lust, theft, villainy, murder, and 
every kindred crime must fly the field, or the Spirit 
of God will never abide. The pioneer can not camp, 
nor even unlimber his team, in the first wilderness 
of his surrender, until these wild beasts are driven 
from their lairs. Sometimes conscienceless men 
subsidize the kingdom of God for selfish gain, or 
lust, or power. Such men are deeper in sin than 
is the infidel world. There is, however, a far larger 



70 The; Certainty of the Kingdom. 

number who have the form of faith but the motions 
of sin. They have carried over the old habit into 
the new life. I would rather take my chance for 
the kingdom of heaven as a drunkard, struggling 
helplessly against the habit of vice, than as a gossip- 
monger to barter the good name of others over a 
mess of pottage in my neighbor's house, or in "sour 
godliness" to find constant pleasure in captious crit- 
icism of the ministry and membership of the Church. 
Sometimes it happens that even under the protec- 
tion of the call to preach men fall into like habits 
of thought. It is the greater shame when a minis- 
ter, in the protection of his sacred calling, "borrows 
the livery of the court of heaven to serve the devil." 
He is the one who, "in virtuous guise transacts 
fouler villainies than common sinners durst meddle 
with!" Away with the hypocrite to the scaffold! 
Life in God must be death to the world. 

II. Self-restraint. A more needed province for 
present rehearsal is that of self-restraint, which con- 
trols every lawful desire within its permitted limits 
in grace. It is easier to battle against the pro- 
nounced sins of the common catalogue than to enter 
that realm which is known alone to the soul that 
surveys it, and which can not be analyzed by others 
except in their imperfect judgment of the visible 



The: Price; of Li^E. 71 

life. There is a province of self-restraint that is as 
essential to the thought of purity as is the abandon- 
ment of flagrant vice. The old Greek said, "Vice 
is the excess of virtue." He was right so far as he 
went, though incomplete in the analysis of sin. 
There are many desires, even passions, right in 
themselves, that gild in moderation, but blacken in 
the excess. One may sit down to the bountiful re- 
past at the table of his friend where health waits 
upon delayed appetite. If when properly satisfied 
he does not obey the injunction of Solomon where 
he says, "Put a knife to thy throat if thou be a 
man of appetite," he will sin. What was good in 
moderation becomes evil in the excess. Self-re- 
straint is essential to that permitted realm of pure 
desire which would touch the most sacred relation- 
ships of life. All desires are created to outrun ca- 
pacity, and must, like the baying hound in the chase, 
or steed champing the bit, be held in by the author- 
itative voice of the master. As men are better 
known the conviction is forced upon belief that the 
majority of even our well-meaning workers in the 
Church of God never learn the import of this need 
of self-restraint. To the mountain, O Israel, in 
prayer — that the life of the example of self-sacrifice 
from Nazareth may be inwrought into the very 



72 The; Certainty of the Kingdom. 

fiber of being, and be re-lived in the men of God 
to-day. 

III. Submission to the Higher Law. Close to 
this province of self-restraint, yes, a further devel- 
opment of it, lies that realm of restraint where the 
more subtle choices affecting character are made, 
and where the most refined forms of rebellion may 
linger. It is restraint in the higher realm, obedience 
to the higher law. Inward emotion easily eludes 
analysis, even to the faithful themselves. Here are 
found the more sensitive conditions of mind and 
heart. Temptations vary with the surroundings, 
and with the changes of passing years. Those 
forms of attractive vice that allured you in youth 
have lost their keener pleasure. As the years have 
advanced the more reflective moods have asserted 
themselves. The buoyant disposition that led you 
in youth to rush into sin, has been chastened by 
time. But the sins of a meditative life are more 
difficult to grapple than the passions of youth. As 
men grow older they become more tenacious of 
opinion. They, if successful, will less and less 
brook restraint. Judgments against others tend to 
become more harsh, as self-satisfaction will become 
more arrogant. More men are vindictive after they 
are forty than there are before. There is danger 



The; Price; of LitfS. 73 

with the unsuccessful of lapsing to the state of the 
abandoned, and with the prosperous of rising to the 
scorn of the proud. It is a task more than human 
to maintain the even balance of passion, and keep 
changing life ever true to its God. Here lies the 
needed conquest of faith. 

There is a more subtle province still, where the 
soul devoted to God finds the very enthusiasm of 
faith becoming impatient with the ungodly, or per- 
chance becoming self-willed in the inner ascetic life 
of the soul. The sun stands still to aid in this bat- 
tle for "death." But we are tempted to ask, Will it 
ever go down till the judgment is here? We have 
never yet seen one who gave evidence of such grace. 

I remember well the oft-repeated word of Wm. 
I. Fee, the pastor evangelist of the Cincinnati Con- 
ference, now of sainted memory. He was eighty 
years old when so often he spoke to me in phrase 
like this : "Last night I struggled with the tempter. 
I fought as if for my life. But I gained the vic- 
tory." I said in wonder: "What temptations can 
you have ? Why should you struggle ? Life's work 
is assured and everything well." He sat in my room 
in the big arm-chair one day, and in answer to a 
question about his Christian experience, said: "I 
seldom use the word sanctification in regard to my 



74 The; Certainty of the Kingdom. 

experience, for it is so misunderstood; but I claim 
tc have the assurance of a complete consecration." 
Raising his slender hand above his head and hold- 
ing it there, he added: "I trust I say it with all 
humility — I say it to the praise of God — I have not 
been angry in fifty-four years." And I believed it 
was true. Yet here was the testimony of one of 
whom more men could say good and fewer men 
speak evil than any man besides I remember to have 
known, who fought daily against some foe in 
thought. In the wide friendships made possible in 
the ministry, and even in the closer fraternity of 
the Conference itself, there seems daily proof that 
with most of us this living death in the soul's inner 
sanctuary has been supplanted with the dying life 
of a failing faith. 

The search for holiness finds strange comment 
ir. the early days when the hermits and monks went 
apart from the world. They thought that to dwarf 
the body was to develop the soul ; to kill the pres- 
ent was to create the future. We have long since 
learned that one can better battle himself into purity 
by entering the thick of the fray than by flying the 
field to seek God in a cell. But look at them, and 
tell me what they sought. They denied themselves 
all comfort of home, society, friends ; lived on roots 



The: Price: of Life. 75 

or the humblest of common food ; rose early, prayed 
late, did penance; lived on a pillar or in a cave; 
bound a chain around the waist cutting into the 
bone, or racked themselves with some form of daily 
torture; slept on beds of iron, or straw, or on the 
ground. They lived unhonored, and died unsung. 
Blind, foolish men ! They should be pitied and not 
blamed. But tell me, what were they seeking? In 
all their blindness they sought the inner life of God. 
They "died" to the world as they understood 
"death. " And to-day they rise in judgment against 
the Church of God. What have we done in our 
luxury to let God know and men believe that we 
have abandoned the world for the kingdom of 
heaven ? 

If we understand Paul's command, it is to that 
living death, that habit of life, that holiness of heart 
which secures the conquest of self for the kingdom 
of God. Let us together go to Nebo's summit and 
view the Promised Land. Then, in the name of Him 
who stood on the pinnacle of Jerusalem's temple, 
trod its wine-press, and trampled its Olivet, let us 
go up and possess it. 

IV. Unselfish Labor. Our surrender of self for 
the good of others is absolutely essential to the life 
of holiness. In the mart where are purchased the 



76 The Certainty of the: Kingdom. 

commodities for character, the standard of values is 
each man's surrender for other's gain. We would 
hold this to view in the light of two complemental 
facts : first, every great movement has meant the 
reformer's death; and second, such sacrifice brings 
its own reward. 

It has seemed to require the incarnation of great 
thoughts in heroic manhood before the world has 
ever been deeply influenced by any great truth. No 
great thought has been wrought into the life of the 
world, but that a Calvary followed close after the 
baptism in a Jordan. The world's heroes are al- 
ways anointed with blood. Look at the heroic band 
that first risked life on the truth of the teaching of 
Christ. Have you examined their history to see the 
truth of the claim? Almost every man died a vio- 
lent death. John is excepted, but with him it took 
the prison of Patmos to open his eyes to the invisi- 
ble city. James, the brother of John and cousin 
of Jesus, was beheaded at Jerusalem, as was also 
Matthias and Paul on the block in Rome. Five 
were crucified ; Philip in Phrygia, Andrew and Jude 
in Edessa, Peter and Bartholomew at places un- 
known. Matthew was slain with a halberd in 
Ethiopia. James, the brother of the Lord, was 
stoned and his brains dashed out by a fuller's club 



The; Price: of Life. 77 

in Jerusalem, Mark was dragged to death in Alex- 
andria. Luke was hanged on an olive-tree in Greece, 
and Thomas was thrust through with a spear in 
India. Following down the line from Polycarp to 
Boniface, to the Waldenses and Hussites, from 
Savonarola to the last dread facts of the inquisi- 
tion, it is the torch of the martyrs that has lighted 
the march of the ages. The history of the past can 
be read by the light of the fagot. But the fagot now 
only smolders. Even the humanities of men show 
that the world is moving Godward. 

Though this is true, the fact remains that the 
grace developed in persecution has been needed for 
the purest records of Christendom. I would call you, 
my friends, to the eternal law of sacrifice whose 
grosser forms, we trust, have passed forever into 
history, but whose more refined province in personal 
sacrifice for the good of others must be known to 
every child of God to-day. The missionary spirit 
in the believer, speaking its lessons of love, is the 
most eloquent appeal to a world in crime that has 
ever echoed through the darkness to lead man to 
God. 

Then, too, the reward of such a life is a delight 
that makes self-denial happy and sends the soul 
singing in joy toward the gates of paradise. We 



78 The Certainty off the Kingdom. 

are not a band of bigots who surrender all pleasure. 
We are the richest owners in the universe of God. 
How tender the lament ! How triumphant the expe- 
rience! How reasonable the love of the converted 
and banished Jewish maiden, singing as she cast the 
glance of love back to her retreating home : 

"Jesus, I my cross have taken, 

All to leave and follow Thee ; 
Naked, poor, despised, forsaken, 

Thou, from hence, my all shalt be. 
Perish every fond ambition, 

All I 've sought, and hoped, and known ; 
Yet how rich is my condition, 

God and heaven are still my own !" 

It is the pleasure of living death, the passion of 
holiness for others' good, the re-lived life of the un- 
selfish Son of God. May its refluent joy from the 
waves of missionary love for men make happy every 
child of faith ! 

V. Submission to the providence of God is the 
sacred, tender experience when all the world has 
fallen but the cross, and upon its reaches the soul 
stands to gaze into the face of its God. Life thus 
far with you and with me may have been almost 
cloudless. No hearse may have stood at the dpor- 
way. No trial may have wrecked nervous strength. 
No storms may have swept the ship from its moor- 



The; Price: of Life;. 79 

nigs. But, my friends, the day is coming when in 
the first chill of the winter, if the fire burn not in 
the heart, all life will seem a crime, and God respon- 
sible for it all. Happy is that one who before night- 
fall will light the lamp in his cabin home! When 
business is prosperous and health present, the home 
happy, and opportunity at hand, it requires no grace 
to be reconciled to life. Just to live then is joy. 
But when the trial comes it requires new grace. I 
remember most vividly one day when Thomas H. 
Pearne, one of our stalwarts, took me by the arm 
as we walked together and said, addressing me 
familiarly: "I want you to pray for me. It takes 
more grace to retire than to labor. I need your 
prayers." When the hour of your trial is at hand 
may there One be with you like unto the Son of 
man! 

Bereavement, without faith, is deafening, blind- 
ing, destructive. It is terrible! And even to the 
Christian, the first tempest brings indescribable 
agony. The truth is, the first gash that death ever 
;cuts in the turf of your family burying-ground will 
seem to open a grave wide enough to bury your 
hope forever. But the sweet refuge of sorrow is 
in the bosom of God. It is upon earth's agony that 
the fragrance of heaven is distilled. It has been well 



80 The: Certainty of the; Kingdom. 

said that "A woman's face is never so beautiful as 
just after she has passed through a great sorrow." 

There lived last year, my neighbor, a minister 
of the Presbyterian Church. He was my friend. 
I loved him. His child played with mine, and good 
will daily was carried by word of mouth, or over the 
'phone. Last October he took sick, and gradually, 
yes, quickly, went down. He struggled, he prayed, 
he pleaded, he hoped. One day he said : "I want to 
talk a long talk with you about what God will do 
in answer to prayer." But sometimes, as Chrysos- 
tom puts it, our prayers are not answered in kind, 
but kindness. He grew worse. They went to the 
far West,- but all in vain. One day he said to his 
brave, noble wife, as he laid his head on her 
shoulder: "O, mother! let's just cry all we want 
to, then let me lie down and die, for that will be 
the end of it all anyway." Then rallying in faith, 
he went to his death like a conqueror to his throne. 
In the bloom of immortal hope he died. No! He 
went to his triumph. 

As a minister I am often called to the cemetery,, 
It is always well kept. We could ask no more. But 
it always rains there. You can shave the lawn and 
polish the shaft. There is nothing that makes it 
beautiful, even bearable, but faith ! Through faith, 
however, every shaft is a prism, every grave a 



The Price off Life. 8i 

doorway, every mound a mount of transfiguration. 
I shall never forget the rebuke when a pastor in 
Hillsboro. I said to one living within the limits 
of the cemetery ground, "I should think this would 
be a gruesome place to live." She replied, "Why, 
no ; just think of what a place to live if the resur- 
rection morning was here !" 

Some day you will see again the cherished of 
earth. The friends of the years, the family of your 
love, your father long gone, your mother upon 
whose cheek you would give the world if only you 
could once more press your lips, and whisper to her 
your love. The triumph is coming. Blind eyes are 
now being opened. Deaf ears are now hearing. 
The discordant voices of life are even now blending 
into harmony. The divergent rays are beginning to 
unite. One day it will be the white light of heaven. 
His kingdom has begun in your hearts, and of it 
there shall be no end. It is life — life — eternal life! 
Be willing, then, to press out your own life's blood 
into the cup and drain it to its dregs. Immortal 
life is in its pledge ! 

The law unveiled in the word of our text bears 

with its lesson of sorrow also the life of our God. 

It seems to us, as we glance back to it, like Mount 

Shasta in its glory. There Shasta stands the key, 

6 



82 The Certainty of the: Kingdom. 

they tell us, to the volcanic line of the West. Eight 
hundred years ago it last "blew its head off." Yet 
each year, almost month, it rumbles and heaves and 
groans and all but turns into eruption. Fourteen 
hundred feet down from the crest there is a mouth 
three-fourths of a mile wide. For twenty- four hun- 
dred feet they have let down the lead, but no plumb 
line has touched the bottom. Last year for hours, 
as we gradually ascended its base, it towered above 
us, no matter which way we went. We might turn 
this way or that way, but Mount Shasta still stood 
like a guardian peak clad in white. Fourteen thou- 
sand three hundred and eighty feet it lifted its crest 
into the air. The sun shone round us in the 
warmth of June. The fields waved and fruits were 
ripening. But, snow clad for a mile straight down 
from its summit, it stood majestic and beautiful, 
glistening in the sunlight or silvered in the moon- 
light — nature's meeting ground for the inner fire 
and upper air. Our text is a Mount Shasta. The 
fires of sacrifice roll, and heave, and gather. Man 
must die to selfish life. But on its slope the sun 
shines. White in the pure light of the life of God 
it is most beautiful. Step up on its slopes! Climb 
to its crest! You feel yourself going Godward. 
See ! See ! From its summit the kingdom of heaven ! 
May God help you to enter in ! 



V. 

MEMORY'S PLACE IN DESTINY. 

"My sin is ever before me/' — Psa. li, 3. 

The; life of David the Shepherd King is crude 
and unchaste, in the light of the teachings of Christ. 
But in contrast with the contemporary kings of that 
early day, it is unsullied and beautiful. In 2 Sam- 
uel we find the story of his dealings with Uriah, 
w T hich violate every sensitive feeling. Were one of 
our leaders to-day guilty of like crime, he would 
be banished from the favor of the good. If the 
offender were numbered a leader in the Church of 
God, none would now restrain the strength of the 
law. It is to the honor of the Old Testament law 
that the immoral liberty allowed to other kings was 
forbidden the leader in Israel. 

It was while a war was in progress against the 
Ammonites, that David, at dusk, walked upon the 
roof of his palace. He may have been meditating 
upon the plans of the campaign. Or possibly, in 
the seclusion of the early evening, he was endeavor- 

83 



84 The Certainty of the Kingdom. 

ing to forget care in brief exercise. As he walked 
back and forth he espied one in a neighboring apart- 
ment, who appeared to him to be most beautiful. In 
the unguarded moment he yielded to the impulse of 
sin. In answer to his inquiry, the reply was soon 
brought by his servant that it was Bathsheba, the 
wife of Uriah, whom he saw. Taking advantage of 
Uriah's absence upon the field of battle, David 
sinned in fact as well as in thought. Then, in 
order the better to protect himself, he recalled 
Uriah to Jerusalem. The character of Uriah 
flashes in unselfish beauty, in his refusal to 
return to his home, through loyalty to his 
isolated companions on the field. Some new 
plan must be devised. David quickly made Uriah 
himself the bearer of a sealed letter, instructing 
Joab to place him in the front of the battle. This 
was done, as the king directed, even to the rash 
charge by picked men against the very wall of the 
enemy's city. In the attack Uriah was killed by 
one of the marksmen on the wall. The plan had 
succeeded — Uriah was dead. Guilty of the double 
crime of unchastity and plotted murder, David now 
thinks, unpunished, to rejoice in the result of his 
success. But the messenger of judgment soon tar- 
ried at the gate. The prophet of vengeance was 



Memory's Place in Destiny. 85 

upon him. There stood before him one who, under 
the guise of a case for judgment, exposed the king's 
own crime to his astonished gaze. It was Nathan. 
He said, "there were two men in one city, the one 
rich, the other poor. The rich man had exceeding 
many flocks and herds, but the poor man had noth- 
ing, save one little ewe lamb, which he had bought 
and nourished; and it grew up together with 
him and his children. It did eat of his own meat, 
and drank of his own cup, and lay in his bosom, 
and was unto him as a daughter. And there came 
a traveler unto the rich man, and he spared to take 
of his own flock, and of his own herd, to dress for 
the wayfaring man that was come unto him; but 
took the poor man's lamb and dressed it for the man 
that was come to him." At the simple statement of 
the supposed case for judgment, David execrated 
the foul perpetrator and said, "As the Lord liveth, 
the man that hath done this thing shall surely die." 
Then Nathan, looking the king full in the face, and 
sending the keen thrust of the blade of judgment 
through his heart, said, "Thou art the man." He 
alluded to the sin against Uriah, and pronounced 
the verdict of the Almighty against David, and 
against such crime to the end of time. This was the 
occasion of conviction for sin in David's thought. 



86 The; Cert ainty of the; Kingdom. 

He saw not this sin alone, but the many besides, in 
which he had justly incurred the wrath of God. 
The one sin was but the first bird of the flock, and 
was the signal for many to follow. As he reviewed 
his sins, his thoughts sank more heavily, like the 
fog in the valleys as it went down to the very 
depths. He saw his sinful state, and cried for for- 
giveness. While in the throes of repentant sorrow, 
he wrote the beautiful fifty-first Psalm, in the third 
verse of which our text is found — "My sin is ever 
before me." He prayed, "Wash me thoroughly ;" 
that is, again and again. He was harassed by the 
consciousness of crime. He could not away with 
it. It flung its hideous form before him. Uriah's 
face was before his face. Two eyes stared into his 
eyes. The finger of judgment pointed directly at 
him. He was tortured in mind. He remembered 
his sin. He cried out, "It is ever before me," show- 
ing the deathless quality of memory. This brings 
us into the presence of the thought in our text, 
which we desire to interpret and apply, L e., the part 
that memory plays in destiny. 

Theology, on the human side, is an attempt to 
put into definition the contending forces for char- 
acter building, and, on the divine side, to formulate 
the movements of God's Spirit, superintending the 



Memory's Place in Destiny. 87 

conflict. The noblest province for the activity of 
the forces of the kingdom of God is the mind of 
man. So true is this, that a right mental philosophy 
is an essential for a clear analysis of the vital ques- 
tions of Christian experience. The right balance 
of our faculties, in reference to moral ends, is the 
prime aim of religion. When secured, contentment 
follows; when violated, conscience is tormented. 
The conscious and purposed moods of thought that 
culminate in conduct are life or death, heaven or 
hell. Sometimes the mind seems a tournament 
hell. 

Let us briefly note the relative worth of memory 
among the faculties. Sometimes the mind seems a 
tournament ground, where the knights-errant strive. 
The will is the knight ; the memory his armor, plume, 
and steed; imagination his expectant cavalcade of 
backers ; the judgment the presiding queen, to decide 
the fate of contesting steel. Sometimes the mind ap- 
pears as a court-room, with destiny itself on trial. 
The judgment presides on the bench; the imag- 
ination makes the plea; the will, as the court-crier, 
summons the evidence; while the evidence itself, 
upon which the decision rests, is the memory. Most 
men rely upon memory for both their facts and 
the mode of their statement; while only a few do 



88 The Certainty of the Kingdom. 

original thinking. With the majority, memory is 
the greatest of all the faculties ; and with every one 
it is important. In the immortal life of mind, mem- 
ory must forever act its part. It is eternal, and will 
enter into destiny, whether that be in good or evil. 

We would briefly note the laws that govern 
memory. Clear perception will make memory easy, 
and, if there be the right habit of recollection, will 
make it almost unerring. The will has much to do 
with the precision of memory, for the executive 
ability in man seems to command every separate 
faculty. A thought, distinct and separate from all 
other ideas, will be more easily retained. The wheel 
whirling in the midnight, revealed by the flash of 
the lightning, seems standing still, and is photo- 
graphed upon the mind. The emotion, awakened by 
self-interest, will arouse the whole mind to intense 
activity. The face, attitude, and words of an ac- 
cuser or messenger of sad tidings will long remain 
vivid. The swift rush of fate, with a drowning 
man, will send life's panorama a thousand leagues 
in the review in the click of a second. The moun- 
tain peaks of memory all seem to join the swift 
parade, and flash by with the speed of the lightning. 
Life is reviewed. The natural like or dislike will 
act a most important part in our review of the 



Memory's Place in Destiny. 89 

mind's treasures. A philosopher forgets mathemat- 
ical formula, a mathematician abstract truths, and 
a jester sober facts, though possessed of endless 
varieties of fun. Each recalls the facts according 
to his likes, and forgets according to his dislikes. 
Thomson most beautifully expresses the idea in the 
words, "Prevailing disposition paints the panorama 
of remembered thought." But we seek only to 
analyze memory for its moral quality, and believe 
there is a law as deep as nature and as enduring 
as eternity, that will find its place in immortal des- 
tiny. 

Character gauges memory. Our love, our hate, 
settled into disposition, will prove as immovable as 
the hills, as unchanging as the fixed fiber of im- 
mortal mind. 

Come with me in a brief retracing of the years. 
Go back to the home of your childhood, and tell me 
what you see. It was possibly a humble farm home 
among the hills, but happiness reigned. Sometimes 
the task seemed hard, when cutting the wood, or 
calling the kine, or belated at school you stood on 
the floor. There were your brothers and sisters, 
the lads and lassies from the neighboring farms; 
and one of them now walks by your side. How 
happy the shout! How free the air! How blessed 



90 The; Certainty otf the Kingdom. 

the memory! There was the log sheep-house, the 
stable, the windlass, the lonesome mourning of the 
hoot-owl in the dusk. How vivid it all is! Then 
came the long winter evenings. Your father sat in 
the old arm chair. Adjusting his glasses, or length- 
ening his arms, he read aloud. You listened, and 
wondered — and nodded. Your mother sat in the 
straight-back rocker, listening, knitting, and think- 
ing of you. Then you knelt at her knee, said your 
evening prayer, and kissed her good-night. It is as 
vivid as though it were yesterday. You can almost 
feel the touch of her hand. The sweet accent of 
her love lingers in memory, as fresh as the breath 
of the morning. But the years have changed ; the 
old home is gone. Your father was taken from you 
in the pride of his strength. Your angel mother 
quietly fell asleep one sweet, sad day. She is not 
with you now. Long years have passed since then, 
but memory is vivid. Tell me in truth, as you think 
of them both, is there aught but good that seems 
ever to have been theirs ? No ! Memory gives back 
our loved ones in their fairest forms. All evil is 
forgotten. Only the good is remembered. It is the 
law of love giving cast to life. 

When enmity prevails, the reverse is equally 
true. An enemy possesses no virtues. His graces 



Memory's Place: in Destiny. 91 

lack; his faults overlap. When friendship reigned 
he was among the sons of the fair. But now, mem- 
ory overcast with revenge, his earlier love is but 
the later felony. It is the law of disposition affect- 
ing the past either in good or evil. It is memory 
selecting after its kind. 

Let us follow the thought still further, for in 
its depths is mirrored the eternal. The law of dis- 
position in the wide sweep of its influence brings 
the whole world of activity under its sway. Love 
and hate, once settled in character, will cause mem- 
ory to rehearse the past according to its cherished 
moral moods. Those who are good will delight to 
rehearse the things that are good. The wicked will 
recall the memories that are wicked. We carry with 
us that passion of soul which, allowed to control the 
present moment, will gather from the past like 
worlds with itself, and make man seven-fold the 
child of heaven or of hell. There are some things 
that almost every man would give worlds if he could 
only forget. There are some memories that are like 
the riches of the kingdom of heaven. Which of 
the two worlds we will welcome around us will 
depend upon the moral nature affecting the memory. 

Conscience, the handmaid of destiny, is waited 
upon by memory. Offended, it flies to history for 



92 The: Certainty of the: Kingdom. 

the ground of its terror. Approved, it seeks the 
past to brighten its future. Even the slight wrongs 
we have done to others by mistake do now and then 
send the throbbing angel of regret coursing in pain 
through every vein. But unforgiven sin forever 
lingers in the mind of the evil doer, lit up by the 
lurid light of a coming storm. The memory of 
crime circles the confines of a field of terror, whose 
ever nearing center is the wrath of an offended God. 
Men rest uneasily when possessed with the prophecy 
of coming doom. It renames the guilty soul "Mac- 
beth," and sends swift judgment on the heels of 
crime. The one who carries with him the secret 
knowledge of guilt, is tortured by day and haunted 
by night. He understands too well what Clarence 
meant in King Richard III. He sees his victim 

"... Wandering by, 
A shadow like an angel, with bright hair 
Dabbled in blood. And he squeaked out loud : 
' Clarence is come, false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, 
That stabbed me in the field of Tewksbury. 
Seize on him, Furies ! take him to your torments V " 

Not only a Charles IX, at twenty-four, when 
dying cried out, as he recalled the massacre of St. 
Bartholomew, "How many murders ! what rivers of 
blood!" not only a bloodthirsty Nero hears groans 
from the grave of his murdered mother, but all his- 



Memory's Place in Destiny. 93 

tory seems the hideous whispering gallery of of- 
fended justice, as men have paid the inner penalty 
of their crimes. It is what Joseph Cook calls "the 
innermost laughter of the soul at itself, . . . 
which it rarely hears more than once without hear- 
ing it forever." Out of his vivid discussion of con- 
science we take the last lament of one of America's 
bright minds, John Randolph. He fought a duel 
with Henry Clay. He walks into the senate cham- 
ber staggering in his last illness. Mr. Clay is ris- 
ing to speak. The two men have not addressed 
each other for months. "Lift me up," says Ran- 
dolph, loud enough for Clay to hear him. "I must 
listen to that voice once more." He was lifted up. 
Clay finished his speech, and the men shook hands 
and parted almost friends. Randolph was taken to 
Philadelphia, and his biographer affirms that on his 
death-bed he asked his physician to show him the 
word remorse in the dictionary. "There is no dic- 
tionary in the room," says the physician. "Very 
well ; here is a card. The name of John Randolph 
is on one side of it. Write on the other the word 
which best symbolizes his soul. Write remorse in 
large letters ; underscore the word." After that was 
done, Randolph lifted up the card before his eyes, 
and repeated in a loud voice, three times, "Remorse, 



94 The: Certainty off the Kingdom. 

remorse, remorse!" "What shall we do with the 
card?" says the physician. "Put it in your pocket, 
and when I am dead look at it. ... I hope 
I have looked to Almighty God as a Savior and ob- 
tained some relief; but when I am dead look at the 
word which utters the inmost of my soul, and you 
will understand of what human nature is capable." 
I remember the oppression that settled upon us, 
when, on my first circuit in one of the eight neigh- 
borhoods in which I was appointed to preach, the 
following incident occurred. It was during a pro- 
tracted meeting. One night a man about thirty- 
five years of age strayed into the service, and taking 
his seat, the second from the rear, listened atten- 
tively. Under the impression of the leading of the 
Spirit, I spoke to him. In answer to the question, 
touching his attitude toward religion, he replied in 
most indifferent fashion, "I do n't think much about 
it" A brief conversation followed, in which he 
was frank but unyielding. I left him with this word : 
"My friend, this may be your opportunity." So 
far as we could learn that was his last warning. In 
three weeks the hearse stood at the door. In the 
conscious hours before death his agony of mind 
was most terrible. We forbear a description of the 
scene, but never did we pass the house afterward 



Memory's Place; in Destiny. 95 

but the swaying tree in the corner of the lot seemed 
to echo that shrill, piercing cry, "O, I 'm lost I" 
Memory was forming its awful compact with con- 
science. We are well aware that last experiences 
are sometimes the most unreliable of testimonies, 
nor do we construct an argument upon them. What 
we seek to illustrate is the inevitable swing of des- 
tiny, that hurries the soul through conscious crime 
to a most terrible inward fate. 

Let me tell you the brief story of one whom I 
met only four months since. It was one stormy 
night, early in January of this year, when called to 
preach at one of the union meetings of Dayton, in 
a church of another denomination than our own. 
Following the appeal of the night, during which 
the thought now in review was set forth, a remarka- 
able scene presented itself. All but a few of us 
had left the church. A man, about sixty years of 
age, was earnestly engaged in conversation with a 
member of the Presbyterian Church. Stepping 
down toward them they both faced me as I ap- 
proached. Divining the import of the conversation, 
I said, "My friend, give yourself to God!" With 
a quick movement of the hand and a single word in 
reply, he said, "No!" Again I urged with more 
emphasis, "Give yourself to God to-night I" Again 



96 The: Certainty of the Kingdom. 

he replied in the same word. The third appeal 
brought the response which I will never forget. 
He raised his hands even with his head, and trem- 
bling from head to foot said : "Sir, you do n't know 
me. The time was when I could. But it is too 
late now." Dropping one hand to his side, and 
raising the other above his head, while his eyes 
stared as though into eternity, he added, "I once 
lived in happiness. But O ! the drink ! My wife has 
rejected me. My children have disowned me. I 
have the hell of remorse in my soul now!" His 
hand dropped to his side, and turning slowly he 
passed out into the darkness. I saw him step ankle 
deep into the slush of the street, and his retreating 
form disappear in the shadow of the street light on 
the corner across the way. It was the picture of a 
soul going out into the night. Conscience' was en- 
tering suit to close the mortgage on memory, and 
make it its possession forever. How true and how 
terrible the words of Byron : 

" The mind that broods o'er guilty woes 

Is like the scorpion girt by fire : 
In circle narrowing as it glows, 
The flames around their captive close, 
Till inly scorched by thousand throes, 

And inly maddening in her ire, 
One and sole relief she knows, — 
The sting she nourished for her foes, 
Whose venom never yet was vain, 



Memory's Placs in Destiny. 97 

Gives but one pang and cures all pain, 
She darts into her desperate brain. 
So do the dark in soul expire, 
Or live like scorpion girt by fire ; 
So writhes the mind remorse hath riven, 
Unfit for earth, undoomed for heaven ; 
Darkness above, despair beneath, 
Around it flame, within it death." 

When Herod heard that a prophet had arisen, 
he said, "It is John the Baptist risen from the dead." 
It was memory at work bringing the facts of his 
crime to the aid of offended conscience. One of 
the most terrible thrusts of the blade in the teaching 
of the New Testament is where Christ taught 
through the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. 
In answer to the cry, "Send Lazarus, that he may 
dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue ; 
for I am tormented in this flame/' Abraham replied 
"Son, remember." 

We are not among those who construe the pun- 
ishment of sin in the literal figure of the Scripture. 
Yet a figure is simply the analogy in a concrete form 
of a fact which can not be taught in the construc- 
tion of human language in an abstract way. Nor 
can the figure ever equal the fact. Who is there 
with temerity enough that he would dare to deny 
the province of conscience in the government of 
God ! It is the inner world ablaze. There is a dread 
7 



98 The; Certainty of the: Kingdom. 

to the lost, hungry, lone traveler in the mountains, 
when night is coming on, that words can never de- 
scribe. The crackling of the wind in the pine seems 
the tread of a wild beast. Every reflection is a 
glistening eye, the gulch a grave, the peak its mon- 
ument. He thinks of home ; hears infant voices 
calling him; wishes he was there, if only to die; 
and in indescribable loneliness abandons himself 
to his fate. So is it in the awful journey of an 
abandoned soul entering into its judgment. Every 
reflective moment becomes a glinting blade, and 
every new hope a bleeding victim. The fathomless 
depths of inward torture present a hideous specta- 
cle, more shocking as nature is more sensitive, more 
undying as mercy was more fervent. 

Mind is immortal, therefore memory must be* 
The water at Niagara is unchanged in its leap. So 
is memory in the final wreck of death. The scaf- 
folding of the body gives way, but the building, 
the mind, stands forever. If in this life the re- 
flective faculty is the frequent angel of God in the 
rewards of men, who shall say that an eternal mem- 
ory will not prove the perpetual messenger of the 
Almighty? We remember in our college life the 
figure of Haven in his philosophy, where he de- 
scribed the fitful sound of the breaking waves, heard 
only at uneven intervals by one in the confusion 



Memory's Place; in Destiny. 99 

around. But at midnight, when men were asleep 
and the world had grown quiet, every wave that 
leaped out of the deep and broke itself on the shore 
w r as distinct. So will it be with conscience in the 
future. In the stillness of eternity not a beating 
wave will be lost. Eternity is long; and the awful 
menace of crime is that the guilty soul must live with 
itself forever. 

Yet the enforced existence of the soul with itself 
is as blessed in reward as it is terrible in remorse. 
The one who now walks in conscious love toward 
God and man, is safe from fear in any world where 
God will ever put him. Life's struggles may be 
severe, its battles intense. Care may cut deep the 
furrows, and disappointment sink deep the wells. 
If the soul will but live with God, it will take two 
worlds to tell of its joy. How hallowed the mem- 
ory of life's better moods, even here ! How rich 
such a memory in which to robe the immortal years ! 
The peace that glows and flashes, and brightens 
with the flight of time, will prove as enduring as 
the nature of God. Happy the one who only 
through love recalls life in its settled delights, and 
teaches destiny to wait upon blessed memory. Evil 
forgotten! Good recalled! Time failing! Eternity 
brightening! Heaven assured! And the soul safe 
forever ! 



L, or j 



J • 



VI. 

THE UNVEILED VISION. 

"But whensoever it shall turn to the Lord, the veil 
is taken away/' — 2 Cor. hi, 16. 

Sometimes a text is a beast of burden, and on 
its back we bind many unrelated ideas, suggested by 
analogy, which need to be carried to the tents of 
our hearers. Sometimes it is a cistern, and we draw 
out of it just what we have been able, by our theolog- 
ical plumbing, to turn into it. Sometimes it is a 
well, whose waters, though more difficult to draw, 
are ever springing up from within to give to the 
thirsty the blessing of life. We trust the verse 
chosen to-day may be as the last, whose waters may 
refresh some soul, wearied in life's blistering heat. 
Yes, we would it might prove even more, and be- 
come to us the place, like Jacob's well to the woman 
of Samaria, where, in quiet seclusion, the Son of 
God may talk with us. 

Let us take a brief general survey of the con- 
text before looking directly into the verse of the 
text itself. 

100 



The; Unveii^d Vision. ioi 

The second Corinthian letter was probably the 
third formal communication Paul had sent to 
Corinth, and finds its warrant in the blighted faith 
of those who had once been clear in experience and 
keen in the defense of the Gospel. 

Paul spent much time in Corinth and Ephesus, 
the two gateways between Europe and Asia, for he 
always preferred to face the heathen life at the 
crossing of the currents. After eighteen months of 
preaching and hardship in Corinth, during which 
time he founded the Corinthian Church, he left for 
Jerusalem to fulfill a vow; not, however, until the 
peace of the Society seemed assured in the protection 
of the law under Gallio, against the fomenting Jews. 
Returning to the Ephesian capital he spent three 
years of a most strenuous ministry, fighting down 
the beasts of Ephesus. Being solicitous of the 
Corinthian cause, he made a brief visit to Corinth, 
finding that sad havoc had been wrought through 
many defections, caused by the lapsing of some 
into their formal legalism and lustful habits. He 
spoke of his visit afterward as made "in heaviness. " 
Upon his return to Ephesus he wrote his first brief 
Epistle, now only known to us as the lost letter to 
Corinth. This was, however, probably only one of 
many letters written during his ministry, to this and 



102 The; Certainty of the; Kingdom. 

other Churches, unknown to us now. In his Colos- 
sian letter (iv, 16), he alludes to an Epistle to be 
given to the Colossians by Laodicea, when their own 
letter should be read at Laodicea. There were 
doubtless many personal as well as general 
letters that he wrote. It would be unnatural to 
think that the one to Philemon was the only one 
he had sent, because none other is recorded; just 
as the catalogue of perils in 2 Cor. xi, 24-26, being 
only in part accounted for in the journeys known 
to us would suggest others about which nothing is 
said. 

The Corinthian company had regularly met in 
some house, as that of Aquila or Gaius. They had 
presented the marked and contradictory spectacle 
of fervent Gentile conversion and lapsing Jewish 
defection. So pronounced was the disorder that 
the knowledge of it seems to have even been a fac- 
tor in Paul's feeling when he spoke of "the care of 
all the Churches. " It was in his third residential 
year in Ephesus, probably in the early spring of 
the year 57, that Paul received the fuller word 
about the Corinthian Church. The occasion seems 
to have been the arrival at Ephesus from Corinth of 
a woman named Chloe, with her family. Through 
her account, Paul learned of the disaffection against 



The; Unveii^d Vision. 103 

him, and the prevalent sin among the people. No 
excuse can be offered for the immorality prevalent 
in the Church, yet their unchastity became the oc- 
casion of Paul writing his sacred code of purity in 
his Corinthian letters, and their doubt of the resur- 
rection created the need for the magnificent argu- 
ment in the fifteen chapter of his first letter, to es- 
tablish the faith of the ages. Following his ex- 
tended and most remarkable letter, known as 1 Cor- 
inthians, he dispatched Titus to learn the effect it 
had upon them. Leaving Ephesus immediately 
after the great commotion against him, and failing 
to meet Titus in Troas, he passed on into Mace- 
donia. There he received from him the full truth 
concerning the internal condition of the Church, 
and, as he expressed it himself, "was greatly com- 
forted by the coming of Titus." The result of this 
first letter to Corinth had been to pacify and unify 
the part of the Church favorable to him, but to in- 
tensify the opposition of the faction against him. 
He expressed his comfort, however, in that so many 
had received his word favorably, and proceeded to 
defend both his personal character and his apostolic 
authority among them. This is the intent of the 
second Corinthian letter. 

His self-defense in the third chapter presents a 



io4 The: Certainty of the Kingdom. 

cogent and beautiful argument, in which he de- 
fends his claim by contrasting the superiority of the 
Gospel which he brought them, with the law under 
which they had formerly lived. In view, therefore, 
of this he declares his apostolic authority, and ten- 
derly asserts his rightful claim upon their loyal love. 
How tender and beautiful the affectionate assur- 
ance, "Ye are our Epistle/' as though Paul had 
written the assurance of his own ministry in their 
"hearts of flesh," and out of such a book of testi- 
mony the whole world could read it. Furthermore 
he declares that he and his fellow ministers were 
"able/' meaning both successful and duly commis- 
sioned of God. 

The sixth verse, "the letter killeth, but the Spirit 
giveth life," is the text of a brief and beautiful ar- 
gument, whose three interpreting ideas are found 
in the succeeding verses. In establishing the greater 
glory of the new dispensation, he declares in the 
seventh and eighth verses, the necessary death, un- 
der the law, of every man, consequent upon the in- 
ability of any perfectly to keep it. In contrast with 
this is the dispensation of the Spirit, bringing possi- 
ble life to all the world. In the ninth and tenth 
verses the further interpretation of that death is 
analyzed, declaring that condemnation attaches to 



The Unveiled Vision. 105 

the infraction of the law, and must culminate in 
the death just stated. In opposition to this is the 
righteousness, possible through faith, to every be- 
liever in Christ. No man can keep the perfect law, 
for the law is perfect and man limited and imperfect. 
If man could, by his unaided nature, keep the law, 
then life would have been by the law. Paul says 
in Galatians iii, 21, "If there had been a law given 
which could have given life, verily righteousness 
should have been by the law." On the other hand, 
faith is possible to every man, and this ability being 
now a native gift to a redeemed race, results in pos- 
sible righteousness to every one. In the eleventh 
verse the glory of the old dispensation, whose cere- 
monial fulfillment was to be found in time, was but 
transient ; while the glory of the new Revelation in 
Christ was to last forever. The conclusion is 
clinched, and the statement of the sixth verse re- 
affirmed, in the seventeenth, in the word, "Now 
the Lord is that Spirit, and where the Spirit of the 
Lord is there is liberty" — liberty from death into 
life, liberty from condemnation into righteousness, 
liberty from the limits of time into eternal possi- 
bilities. 

We are thus brought face to face with our text. 
The sixteenth verse, "But whensoever it shall turn 



io6 The; Certainty off the: Kingdom. 

to the Lord, the veil is taken away," is a diamond 
set in the gold of Paul's argument, which seems 
to us as the betrothal ring of Christ to His Church. 
Hold it in the light of inspiration, and it flashes the 
pledge of another world into the depths of this one. 
The prayer to-day accompanies this word, that it 
may give its light to some soul in darkness, and 
make possible the clearer knowledge of a present 
Redeemer. 

I. We would seek, first, the interpretation of 
the darkened vision of our text, which is the war- 
rant for the other related truths of the text. 

No sooner had the brilliant and beautiful argu- 
ment, whose thoughts follow in quick succession, 
like a procession of meteors, been stated in the three 
points of contrast already noted, than a most beau- 
tiful interpretation appears, beginning with the 
twelfth verse. It concerns the reception by the Jew 
of the law at Sinai. Having constructed the argu- 
ment like the scaffolding of a high tower, he stands 
upon it and gazes over the uneven centuries until 
Sinai is on a line with his vision. He sees Moses 
descending from the mountain to offer to an unbe- 
lieving world the Word of the Eternal. He de- 
clares that when Moses had proclaimed the law of 
God to the Israelites, their minds were blinded to 



Ths Unvdiud Vision. 107 

the true intent of the very law which they were 
at that time receiving. 

After Moses talked with God, his face was ra- 
diant with the light of the divine presence. The 
word had reached his inner thought. God was with 
him ; yes, in him. How could he do otherwise than 
show it? The face is the flashlight in the top of 
the tower, and should show to the world the glory 
within. If God made the face of Moses to shine; 
if He showed His glory in the Shekinah, upon an 
altar of gold, to prove to the Jew His continued 
presence, will not the face, the heart's better altar, 
now glow with light when God is with us? The 
Christian should be happy, even radiant of counte- 
nance. If he has learned the contentment of godli- 
ness his very face will speak of that inner rest. It 
is said that when the picture of the one in prayer 
upon the dome of the Capitol was painted, the face 
was a failure until the artist had studied the faces 
of those who believed in Christ. He saw a radiance 
of feature, not born of earth, chastening the ex- 
pression of the face. With this new proof of the 
effect of faith, he touched the countenance of the 
one in prayer with his brush, until the sunlight of 
another world seems reflected in it. Methodism has 
lived, and loved, and shouted its way for a century 



108 The: Certainty otf the; Kingdom. 

past, in the joy of conscious salvation. Nor will the 
glory of a conscious experience through faith in 
Christ, ever be allowed to fail among us. 

When Moses gave to the people the law he had 
received from God, they did not perceive its per- 
fect meaning. Prejudice, passion, jealousy, stupid 
sensuality, idolatry, ignorance became a veil to 
blind their vision. As a sign, therefore, of their 
blindness, Moses put a veil upon his face, which 
he removed, as we are told in Exodus (xxxiv), 
when he went into the presence of the Lord. The 
veil may have had a double significance, both to 
symbolize their blindness, and to conceal from them 
the fading light from the face of Moses.. Moses 
himself could not forever live in such an ecstasy of 
glory. Had they been able to see the light grad- 
ually fade away, a contempt of him and of the law 
he had given, might at once have been awakened. 
Paul first rehearses the historical fact just stated. 
Then he interprets, and further applies the figure, 
by saying that the veil which Moses put upon his 
face was afterward taken from his face, and laid 
over the vision of the Jewish people. In the four- 
teenth and fifteenth verses he declares that "until 
this day remaineth the same veil, untaken away in 
the reading of the Old Testament, which veil is 



The Unveiled Vision. 109 

done away in Christ. But even unto this day, when 
Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart." 

The Old Testament is prophetic of the New. 
Its ceremonies are meaningless, crude, and even 
cruel in themselves, yet in the light of the coming 
dispensation they appear beautiful. Moses himself 
declared that "the scepter shall not depart from 
Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until 
Shiloh come; and unto Him shall the gathering of 
the people be." By this he prophesied the Messiah. 
David said, "Thou lovest righteousness and hatest 
wickedness ; therefore, God, thy God, hath anointed 
thee w T ith the oil of gladness above thy fellows." 
Elsewhere he saw, in prophetic vision, the throne of 
Infinite Power, and said, "The Lord said unto my 
Lord, Sit Thou at My right hand until I make Thine 
enemies Thy footstool." It was David's vision of 
the coming Messiah. Jeremiah prophesied the 
"Comfort" to come. Daniel saw Him under a dif- 
ferent figure, and said, Not a tower, not a throne ; 
but I see Him as a "stone cut out of the mountain 
without hands, that became a great mountain and 
filled the whole earth." Zechariah saw the coming 
Glory of Israel in still different form, and said, 
"Thus speaketh the Lord of hosts, saying, Behold 
the man, whose name is The Branch; and He 



no Ths Certainty of the Kingdom. 

shall grow up out of His place, and He shall build 
the temple of the Lord ; and He shall bear the glory, 
and shall sit and rule upon His throne." All Israel 
had been watching through the centuries for the 
coming of the Messiah. And just before Revela- 
tion went into an eclipse, Malachi shaded his eyes 
to peer into the future, and declared the coming 
dawn in the figure, "The Sun of righteousness shall 
arise with healing in His wings." They had looked 
forward to Christ's coming, but failed to recognize 
Him when He appeared. Their sin was that of 
ceremonial blindness. The gorgeous temple was to 
them God's final building, instead of being symbolic 
of that far grander spiritual frame, the body of be- 
lievers. They seemed blinded to the Redeemer's in- 
tercession, typified in the priestly ministration. 
They trusted the priest rather than the One he 
figured. The offering of a beast was itself effica- 
cious, instead of being simply prophetic of Calvary's 
coming sacrifice. 

The form of faith had become to them the faith 
itself. How often the same is true to-day. Not 
only the criminal folly of a Roman hierarchy is per- 
petuated, but Protestantism may easily be guilty of 
like fault. The seeming faith in the efficacy of 
Church rights, is seen with many among us. It re- 



The Unveiled Vision. hi 

quires constant watching against formalism. The 
great Presbyterian Church is at this very time de- 
bating the advisability of more extended form in 
its service, for those who desire it. Our own 
Church is making more elaborate its ceremonies 
with every succeeding decade. Nor do we lament 
this. Nothing in worship is so beautiful besides as 
religious ceremony made radiant with the Spirit of 
God. A mathematical sanctity, however, may easily 
be substituted for a true faith, which neither finds 
echo in the soul of the worshiper, nor response in 
heavenly blessing. Too much formality may turn 
us from God, like the earth from the sun, until we 
walk in our own shadow. Religion without form 
soon ceases to be religion. We must have some 
visible ceremony to symbolize the invisible and spir- 
itual. Yet it is only the currency of exchange, not 
the real gold of the kingdom. It is the needed wire 
for the current, not the electricity itself. What we 
want in our Churches to-day is the glow, and fer- 
vor, and purity, and power that will make men see 
God as if face to face. Our gorgeous churches, 
massive in architecture and attractive in their fres- 
coed beauty, are but doomed monuments of a once 
intelligent faith, unless graced by the spiritual life 
of the worshipers. It is not the light, filtered 



ii2 The: Certainty of the Kingdom. 

through stained windows, that will hallow our serv- 
ice, but the better brightness of the face of God 
glowing in our hearts in answer to faith. We 
would that every form, with every worshiper in this 
presence, might be broken rather than the face of 
God be hid. 

The Jew was to see that in the new law in 
Christ, the law of the old must culminate, and its 
ceremonies pass away. Their ideals were the exact 
opposite of the evil immediately before them. They 
looked for relief from political and social oppres- 
sion. They expected a temporal Lord, whose throne 
w T ould be in the glory of conquest, and would rest 
upon the fragments of kingdoms. Instead, however, 
of the dignity of a chariot in a triumphal march, 
it was the cradle in the scooped stone feeding trough 
in a Bethlehem stable. Instead of the shouts of 
men, echoing through the world, it was the voice of 
angels, whose song, a symphony of peace, was heard 
only by those whose ears were divinely attuned to 
its music. The Jew studied the word of the old 
law, with its prescribed ceremonies, but could not 
see that the Messiah could ever come in the humble 
form of a peasant of Nazareth. There was no 
beauty, as men define beauty, that would lead them 
to desire Him. He was a man of sorrows, and ac- 



The Unveiled Vision. 113 

quainted with grief. Men hid their faces from 
Him — and they do so still. They prefer the glit- 
tering show of a priestly robe; seek the grace and 
faultless manner of a Chesterfield for their pulpit, 
forgetful of nobler qualities ; prate of the eloquence 
of dazzling metaphors, through some prismatic in- 
tellect, from the lamp of reason; and discount the 
more simple word of honest appeal that would 
prove to be to them the sunlight, if they did but 
know it. They borrow the syren-song of an uncon- 
verted hireling, in place of the less finished but 
more glorious melody of the kingdom; quiet con- 
science in the pomp of service, and rest awhile for 
the new onslaught of the business week. We love 
a beautiful ceremony. We rejoice in increasing 
ministerial culture. We love the art of man, if 
chastened by the love of God. But above all we 
pray, for the deeper love, that will make beautiful 
our forms through perfect faith, and cause the 
radiance of an eternal world to cast its halo of love 
over the hearts of men. 

II. Not only the fact of clear vision is promised 
in the text, but the conditions are named for its 
reception. The relation of intellect and affection is 
cogently stated in the phrase, "Whenever the heart 
shall turn." They were to see the truth, not through 
8 



ii4 The Certainty otf the Kingdom. 

a keen intellect, but through a pure heart. This is 
a day of "criticism," of investigation, of the exam- 
ination of the foundations. Men are asking a sound 
reason for every law of faith; and in this we re- 
joice. Without doubt many things have been placed 
in creeds that God never sanctioned. Men have 
been asked to measure themselves by conventional 
standards, and to bear "burdens grievous to be 
borne." What a splendid chance, in this race of 
life, God has given us, that even the mistakes of a 
bigot can be atoned for by the goodness of his pur- 
pose ! The thought, however, which we here seek 
is the influence of the heart in the understanding 
of truth. Some study the Bible from the standpoint 
cf reason, to the exclusion of faith. They declare 
that reason is the final arbiter of Revelation. We 
are not unmindful of reason's place in the unfold- 
ing of God's thought. He spoke not only to men, 
but through them. A human mind was the chan- 
nel of the divine thought, therefore the truth was 
cast in the mold of limited intellect. It is most 
natural, therefore, that there should be a place for 
"Criticjsm." We believe that the "Higher Critic," 
often assuming, and as often maligned, is doing a 
great work for the purer faith and simpler life of 
Christendom, If we have been guilty of bibliolatry, 



The Unveiled Vision. 115 

we should be willing to repent. The truth can 
never require an error to preserve its benefit to the 
race. Yet there is equal need to remember the right- 
ful place of love in the interpretation of truth. 
Men come to the study of the Bible with a cold log- 
ical intellect, and in their perplexity they shake their 
heads as they turn away, and well they might shake 
them. It is not through the head, but through the 
heart, that men are to see the truth. We can not 
go either through the world nor into the kingdom 
of God "head first." We must go "heart first." 
The heart is the pioneer, though the head may be 
the settler. There are God-sent critics, and there 
are theological speculators, whose icy fingers, clasp- 
ing the emotional doctrines of the Christian teach- 
ing, both chill and strangle till lifeless. A single 
interview with such a trusted adviser has sent many 
a sensitive young man away with a chill for life. 
Such a minister is a director of thought, like the 
poor street-car driver in Columbus, a few years 
since, who froze to death while in his seat, and the 
car freighted with human life rolled on, driven by 
a corpse. We would the prayer of Bishop George 
might ring out over the Church, and receive re- 
sponse from every altar : "O Thou who lightest the 



n6 The: Certainty of the Kingdom. 

lamps of glory, save the Methodist Church from 
freezing out!" 

The mind endeavoring to enter the citadel of 
truth, without love as a guide, will be as a wan- 
dering waif in a great city. It can pass by the edi- 
fice and catch a glimpse of the external magnitude. 
It can desire to enter. But driven from corner to 
cross street, an outcast, it is never so much as per- 
mitted to enter the temple whose inner altar it had 
hoped to see. Alas ! for any Church when its Bibli- 
cal critics will warm themselves, like Jehoiachim in 
his winter palace before the pan of coals, and, dis- 
pleased, cut with the penknife the inspired Word, 
when not according to their preconceived thought 
of what God should do. In Timothy, Paul lodges 
the mystery of faith in a pure conscience. Christ 
says, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
see God." Though truth unfolds in a system, it 
by no means follows that he who, devoid of faith, 
exerts himself with keenest intellect will see deep- 
est into spiritual truth. As the receptive atti- 
tude of one receiving a gift is the ground of the 
bestowal, but not the necessity of its being given, 
just so is study the condition of knowledge, but 
not the necessity of spiritual perception. Our 
search must be mixed with faith. It is "he that 



The: Unvsii^d Vision. 117 

wills to do God's will, that shall know of the teach- 
ing." The humble believer, housed by a cabin, un- 
taught in the schools, ignored among men, yet con- 
tented in God, may see deeper into the spiritual 
truth of the Scripture than the arrogant intellect, 
however skilled, that, through reason alone, would 
tunnel its way into the bosom of the Almighty. Ap- 
proached with faith, the questions that seem "as 
dark as the tents of Kedar," become as "beautiful 
as the curtains of Solomon." The heart must be 
like the lamp which the sculptor wore on his study 
cap. He placed it there that no shadow might fall 
on his work. So the mind, if the heart shed its light 
in the angle of vision, will be able to round the form 
and carve the features of perfect character into the 
likeness of God. 

III. The "whensoever it turns" of the text sep- 
arates the act of turning from all conditions, ex- 
cept the action of the one who turns. It announces 
a definite act, separate from all others; not con- 
tinuous, but complete in itself. The second part, 
"the veil is taken away," is the statement of a pres- 
ent completed action, depending upon the clause 
preceding for its special time and meaning. Thus 
the verse declares that whensoever the heart turns 
the veil is taken away. That is, in the very act of 



ii8 The Certainty of the; Kingdom. 

faith the veil is removed — no tarrying, no delaying, 
no developing, no exchanging the veil for a gauze, 
no growing into it, but instantly, in the flash of the 
eye, the sight pierces the veil and beholds the light 
of God. Could anything more beautifully teach us 
conversion than this ? How pointedly it shows that 
forgiveness of sin is not a process of growth, not an 
evolution, but an instantaneous divine act, resulting 
in the illumination of the soul. 

IV. All Revelation finds its culmination in char- 
acter. The Jew, with the heart turning to God, was 
able to see the truth of God as revealed in Christ. 
It is suggestive of our relation to all truth. 

Isaiah warns the world, in the piercing cry, 
"Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil ; 
that put darkness for light, and light for darkness ; 
that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter ! Woe 
unto them that are wise in their own eyes and pru- 
dent in their own sight !" He does not once suggest 
an apology for ignorance. There is a current 
legend, of which Joseph Cook has spoken, of an old 
hermit, who lived in a cabin on an island in the An- 
droscoggin River in Maine, where the island reaches 
down to the Lewiston Falls. The Indians had 
plotted his death. Under the cover of midnight, in 
the dark of the moon, twelve savages started in 



The: Unvsimd Vision. 119 

their canoes, intent upon the hermit's death. He 
was accustomed to place a light in the cabin win- 
dow, so they steered straight for it. Having learned 
of the plot he had projected the light out over the 
falls, instead of leaving it in his window. The 
murderers steered for the light. In that they were 
right. . But the light was in the wrong place, and 
they were swept by the current over the precipice 
to death. 

A blunt conscience is a crime. Conscience, in 
its human analysis, depends upon the judgment. 
So that a right moral judgment is essential to a 
pure conscience. An unaided human judgment can 
never be a perfect guide, yet a divinely corrected 
judgment may be. As if recognizing this truth, 
Solomon said : "The Lord giveth wisdom. . . . 
He keepeth the paths of judgment, and preserveth 
the ways of His saints. Then shalt thou under- 
stand righteousness, and judgment, and equity; 
yea, every good path." James also says, "If any of 
you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to 
all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall 
be given him." 

The thought of self-darkened vision sweeps over 
the soul like the baleful simoon over the track of 
the lonely desert Arab. We venture even to ask 



120 Ths Certainty o£ ths Kingdom. 

whether the logic of the case would not hold us re- 
sponsible for the light we could have, as well as for 
that which we do possess. Ignorant, criminal, re- 
sponsible, doomed! How terrible is the judgment 
of God upon the lover of sin! If God doomed a 
race, and wrapped a guilty world in the watery 
shroud of a deluge, will not the lightning of His 
anger flash His later judgments upon a more fa- 
vored world, sinning against the better light of this 
newer Revelation! We are traveling a strange 
journey, beset on every hand by sin, yet through 
love the light of God may shine on our pathway, 
and make glorious the journey of the years. But 
we must ask for help. How much more should 
the one who has the greater privilege in Christ pray, 
than the one who only knew the light of nature! 
Yet even the Greek was accustomed to say: 

"I seek what 's to be sought — 
I learn what >s to be taught — 
I beg the rest of heaven." 

V. Look at the mirror of our text in its further 
truth, touching the influence of love. 

The blind devotees of Isis were accustomed, in 
their worship, to reach up and press the veil against 
the face of their goddess, to see, if possible, the 
features underneath. Not so with the new Reve- 



Thi; Unveii^d Vision. 121 

lation in our blessed Christ. The words of the 
Scripture lie like a veil over the features of Divinity. 
But in answer to the prayer of affection vision is 
made [clear. Christ is seen among the precepts and 
truths of the Word as John saw Him in the midst 
of the golden candlestick. The honest inquirer will 
be led to Him. He will see Him face to face, and, 
like Thomas of old, will cry out, "My Lord and 
my God." But Paul's figure is not yet completed. 
In the eighteenth verse he declares, "We all, with 
unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of 
the Lord, are transformed into the same image, from 
glory to glory, even as from the Spirit of the Lord." 
When the Word is studied, and we gaze steadily 
into its depths, we not only see the face of the 
Savior, but gradually the features of His holiness 
seem to be the mirrored face of the believer him- 
self. We see Him. We study Him. We are ab- 
sorbed in Him. We imitate His life, follow His 
teaching, think His thoughts, share His love, de- 
light in His fellowship, rejoice in His purity. The 
mirror that first gave the face of God, at last gives 
back the image of the worshiper. We become like 
Him. "Christ is formed within." We are trans- 
formed into His glory, are "partakers of the divine 
nature." God is known, and heaven is at hand. 



VII. 

PAUL, THE PREACHER. 

"By the grace of God I am what I am" — I Cor. 
xv, 10. 

It is with unsandaled feet we come into the 
presence of the great "Apostle to the Gentiles/' to 
sit down before him, as he had done in the pres- 
ence of Gamaliel, to learn the perfect way of God. 
Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon ruled with the sword, 
then forfeited leadership to live alone in history. 
But Paul for ages has been enthroned in the Empire 
of living Christian thought, receiving the ovations 
of the centuries. Among men, like Saul among the 
tribes, he is head and shoulders above the rest. In 
his grandeur he stands like a peak of the Rockies, 
within speaking distance of the stars. It has been 
well said, "If a ray of light had left the eye of 
Moses traveling horizontally over the centuries, the 
first eye it would have struck would have been the 
eye of St. Paul." 

Candor, however, will demand of us, as we 

122 



Paul, the: Preacher. 123 

;come to the study of Paul as a preacher, that we 
do not shout that the "gods are come down among 
us/' as they of Lycaonia did, for the sun even has 
spots, and Paul was not perfect. 

A great preacher belongs to the centuries, and 
is at home in every age. Paul was such a man. 
In briefly reviewing his pulpit record, it is with the 
hope that a view might be had of the nobler sphere 
of the ministry and Paul's pulpit virtues imitated 
in the contest of to-day. 

Paul was the independent mind of the Apostolic 
Church. He carved out a destiny among the great 
by the absolute independence of his thought. He 
pioneered the way in the early Church to the ac- 
ceptance of the equality in salvation of all men 
before God. This is the prime reason for his great 
argument in the Roman letter. Peter forfeited the 
leadership of the centuries when he failed to see 
the world sweep of the vision before going to Cor- 
nelius. For forty years not one of the twelve ever 
again recognized the idea of Gentile equality. Be- 
tween the baptism of the Spirit at Pentecost and 
the baptism of blood in Jerusalem's fall, no Gentile 
convert was ever baptized into the fellowship of 
Jewish believers. Even after Paul's self-defense 
before the Jerusalem council, when Peter and 



124 The: Certainty of the Kingdom. 

James pleaded for forbearance, the only concession 
gained was that the Gentiles should be let alone. 
It was in such a surrounding that Paul lived. We 
have often thought of the scene in the general coun- 
cil when the unpretentious preacher stood before 
the arrogance of illiberal Judaism for inspection. 
In personal appearance he was not one of the giants. 
The early writers agree in ascribing to the apostle 
"a short stature, a long face with a high forehead, 
an aquiline nose, close and prominent eyebrows, 
baldness, gray eyes, partial blindness, a clear com- 
plexion, a winning expression, a sanguine tempera- 
ment, and some degree of dignity." Not a promis- 
ing candidate, this, for the highest honors among 
them. Yet Paul looks well in the dust of a battle- 
field. As with true greatness, the fray adds the cubit 
to his stature. Mind and theology were never de- 
signed to be put on the scales to be declared in 
avoirdupois. Paul is measured rather by his in- 
tense energy, firm decision, iron will, and profound 
thought. 

It was Paul, the independent, who flung back 
the challenge to illiberal Judaism and massed the 
Gentile world an audience, the only auditors in the 
ages the Apostolic College itself could ever com- 
mand. 



Paul, the Preacher. 125 

The final secret of Paul's power, however, was 
not his independent mind, but his dependence upon 
God. He was "called" of God, and that call gave 
power to every appeal he made. The caption of al- 
most every letter he wrote bears testimony to his 
inward conviction of this call. Through this inner 
call he turned the search-light on Calvary's dark 
summit, exposing to the throbbing gaze of men the 
infinite plan of redemption. To the uncalled min- 
isters even the evil spirits say, as they did to the 
sons of Sceva in Ephesus (Acts xix, 15), "Jesus I 
know, and Paul I know, but who are ye?" Un- 
happy the hour when inclination and adaptation will 
fully define the call to the ministry. The final se- 
cret of power lies in a conscious command from 
God, an inwrought conviction to duty, a quenchless 
longing to save men, an agony that burns its way 
in, and must burn its way out, till the soul on fire 
will flash the truth of God in conviction into the 
hearts of men. The need of the hour is for prophets 
not priests; for prophetic fire, not ceremonial con- 
tentment. We do not need more men in the min- 
istry, but more ministers possessed with a death- 
less passion to save men. Paul was a man with a 
mission, therefore destiny seemed to wait upon his 
ministry. 



126 The: Certainty of the: Kingdom. 

When God called Paul to the ministry he chose 
one who was willing to prepare himself for the best 
work. Well did he say to Timothy: "Study to 
show thyself approved" (2 Tim. ii, 15) ; "Give at- 
tention to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine" (1 
Tim. iv, 13) ; "Meditate upon these things, give thy- 
self wholly to them, that thy profiting may appear to 
all" (1 Tim. iv, 15). No unlearned fisherman, 
though bold as Peter or lovable as John, could ever 
preach like the student of Gamaliel. A lazy min- 
ister is as one sleeping on the edge of a rumbling 
volcano; and he deserves, more than all men be- 
side, to make his bed in its fiery bosom. 

Instructed in the law, taught in the schools, 
great by nature and drill, Paul still sought the soli- 
tudes of Arabia for three years before entering 
upon his work. Solitude is the friend of the great, 
the angel to the good, the world's civilizer. In the 
quiet hours of study the minister of God will find 
that hallowed thoughts, like descending manna, will 
fall from heaven, and the angel of the covenant will 
break over his heart the sweet perfume of a far- 
away land. 

Let us come nearer to Paul in his work. He 
was not what men call a popular preacher. He 
builded too well for immediate approval. His ene- 



Paul, ths Preacher. 127 

mies were numerous, so that he said, with more be- 
hind the expression than in it, — "If it be possible, 
live peaceably with all men." There is a tinge of 
sadness in it. He himself had never been able to 
do so. He suffered from isolation and jealousy, the 
penalties of positive character. 

He was unselfish. The "call" heralded this. 
Paul was poised for the ascent to fame, one foot 
resting on the first step, when he abdicated the cov- 
eted throne of Jewish opportunity. Thereafter all 
honors were unsought. Whether writing to dis- 
tant Churches, preaching to vagrant crowds, break- 
ing a lance on Ephesian field, or on his way to the 
"General Conference" at Jerusalem, he was abso- 
lutely unselfish. It is with a self-sacrifice akin to 
the passion of the Son of God he said, "I was about 
to wish myself accursed from Christ for my breth- 
ren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." 

The companion virtue of unselfishness is fear- 
lessness. That he was "bold" is recorded of him 
at Jerusalem (Acts ix, 29), at Iconium (Acts xiv, 
3), at Ephesus (Acts xix, 8), and at Thessalonica 
(1 Thess. ii, 2). Once in a while he became rash. 
We have always admired Paul more because he 
called the high priest a "whited wall." He came 
down to our level for once to tell Ananias the plain 



128 The Certainty oe the Kingdom. 

truth. He was radical enough generally to cause 
an uproar, so that we are reminded of Sydney Smith 
when he said "his life had always been passed like a 
razor, either in hot water or a scrape." Paul could 
tack against the wind, but feared the fatal calm. 

Still he was modest. Hear him in the Corinthian 
letter say, "I was with you in weakness, and fear, 
and in much trembling." His modesty, however, 
was simply the tension of reserved ability. 

He was shrewd and pliable, ever-present quali- 
ties of the finest leadership. At the Sanhedrin at 
Jerusalem (Acts xxiii, 6), when under fire of his 
accusers, he deftly threw in the question of the 
resurrection, setting the company against itself, 
bringing the Pharisees to his rescue. He was plia- 
ble, like the tree in the tempest; grounded in the 
truth, but yielding in methods and in matters of 
convenience. When the storm was over he raised 
himself and stood like a mountain pine. Some 
preachers never learn the difference between firm- 
ness and stubbornness, force and friction. They 
tear up by the roots in rage in trying to preach a 
message of love. Paul became "all things to all 
men, that by all means he might save some." In 
his Colossian letter he said, "Let your speech be al- 
ways with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may 
know how ye ought to answer every man." 



Paul, the: Preacher. 129 

In style of rhetoric the critic may find much to 
condemn. He seems often disjointed. His writ- 
ings remind one of a traveler in the city, passing 
down the main street, stopping at each crossing and 
looking both ways. But one thing is certain, he 
never turns back, nor loses his way. Though Paul's 
native tongue was Aramaean, he w r as proficient in 
Greek ; still, as it has been well said, it was the pro- 
ficiency of a foreigner. We have no reason to think 
he was a profound scholar in the Greek poets or 
mythology, even though he did quote once from a 
play of Menander in 1 Cor. xv, 33, "Evil communi- 
cations corrupt good manners;" once from Epi- 
menides in Titus i, 12, "The Cretans are always 
liars ;" and once when at Athens from the "Phenom- 
ena" of his own countryman, Aratus, in Acts xvii, 
28, "For we are also his offspring." He confesses 
when charged that he "is rude in speech," speaks 
again of himself as not coming "with the excellency 
of speech or of wisdom." At Corinth they said 
his "speech was contemptible." Through malice, 
however, came the criticism, through modesty the 
confession. Paul was pointed and penetrating. He 
always made a point when he spoke, and sharp 
enough, too, that if some were too blind to see it, 
they could feel it, His laconic expressions may not 
9 



130 The; Certainty of the Kingdom. 

always bend like a Damascus blade, but they cut 
like a two-edged cimeter. Much of what has been 
called "profound" preaching has been described as 
the brilliancy of a "lightning-bug in a fog." Not 
so with Paul. The deeper the discussion, the more 
luminous he becomes. Read the book of Ephesians 
or Romans, the thirteenth or fifteenth chapters of 
1 Corinthians or the eleventh of Hebrews, and you 
are spellbound. It is the eloquence of profound 
thought. 

Let us now come in the company near enough 
to hear the apostle preach. 

Paul never found it convenient to preach from 
another man's skeleton. His plumes were never 
borrowed. He was not like the moon, simply a re- 
flector; but, like the sun, he drove his chariot 
through the pathway of the heavens, majestic in 
glory, shining out of his own greatness. His ser- 
mons were timely, and usually short. When at. 
Troas (Acts xx, 7-11), he preached till Eutychus 
fell asleep and was killed. If we had power to 
raise the dead, we, too, might lengthen out our ser- 
mons. We can kill, but it is hard to make alive. 
When he disputed daily in the temple, there is no 
record of prolixity. Whenever Paul cast out devils, 
which is the preacher's mission to-day, he used few 



Paul, the; Preacher. 13] 

words. An ordinary man can say in forty minutes 
all he can think up in a week. 

What tenderness, what sympathy, what loyalty 
prompted every appeal he made ! To the elders of 
Ephesus he said, "For three years I ceased not to 
warn every one, night and day, with tears." When 
recounting his afflictions he declares, "None of these 
things move me, neither count I my life dear unto 
myself." In Csesarea he said, "I am ready, not to 
be bound only, but to die at Jerusalem for the name 
of the Lord Jesus." 

As you listen to the great apostle preach, you 
are greeted with the bugle-call to a battle, and are 
precipitated, as with the force of an avalanche into 
the midst of intense conflict. A man in the pro-, 
foundest depths of conviction stands before you* 
self-possessed, fearless, but kind. His voice has 
the ring of the anvil in it, his logic the fire of a 
divine eloquence. There are five abbreviated, 
formally recorded sermons in the book of Acts ; in 
chapter xiii, 14-43, where at Antioch he recounts 
the historical preparation for Christ; in chapter 
xvii, 22-31, where, on Mars' Hill, he argued one 
living God; in chapter xxii, 3-21, where he stood on 
the stairway of the castle in Jerusalem and argued 
from experience; in chapter xxiv, 10-21, where, at 



132 The; Certainty of thk Kingdom. 

Caesarea, he makes a personal defense of his inno- 
cence; and in chapter xxvi, 1-23, before Agrippa, 
where he argues the resurrection from the power 
of Christ already shown to him. His aim in each 
case is to prove the truth. Nowadays we must have 
a new name for the livery of each discourse, and 
have each fresh steed in its labeled stall, or the 
homiletic critic will rule us out of the race. There 
was one predominant characteristic in Paul's 
preaching: He was argumentative. How often it 
is said "he reasoned!" (Acts xvii, 2; xviii, 4; xviii, 
19.) As a type of his logic, examine the clear 
reasoning of the third chapter of 2 Corinthians, 
where he compares the old and new dispensations. 
In 1 Cor. xv, he has set the model of the proof of 
the resurrection for all time ; in Ephesians he lays 
the foundation of the Eternal Church of God; in 
Galatians he argues the principle of salvation by 
faith; while in Romans you behold the apostle in 
the triumph of his profound logic. It is the world's 
masterpiece. It is not only logic, it is logic 
on fire. In it he is like a giant in bat- 
tle, wrought up to the highest tension. His 
voice sounds like the artillery of the field. He 
rises in the conflict like a herculean statue among 
dwarfs. You feel yourself expanding in sympathy 



Paul, the Preacher. 133 

with his inspiration. The text throbs — rises — 
lives. His outbursts of passion follow in procession, 
like "thunderstorms across the bosom of the sky/' 
His logic cleaves the avalanche from the mountain- 
side to bury his opponent in its debris. He throws 
his soul into the argument like the sweep of a cata- 
ract. Like Samson, he feels for the pillars of an 
unrighteous argument, and, bowing himself, buries 
the Jew forever from sight. 

Paul was pre-eminently doctrinal Though cau- 
tioning against "foolish questions, genealogies, and 
strivings about the law" (Titus iii, 9), he urges 
both Timothy (2 Tim. iv, 2) and Titus (i, 9) to 
the study and preaching of doctrine. Doctrinal 
preaching has more power in it than all other forms 
combined. It has always been the herald of refor- 
mation. Nor are our people averse to it. They 
simply object to the public post-mortem of .creeds, 
whose statements found point in the peculiar age 
that called them forth. They know the difference 
between "the foolishness of preaching," foolish 
preaching, and preaching foolishness. There never 
was a time when the Scriptural truths, applied with 
practical point to life and experience, were more 
welcomed by a needy world than to-day. 

Paul was a man of great and oft-repeated 



134 The Certainty of ■ the Kingdom. 

themes, the most frequent being the resurrection. 
Whether he stands before Felix (Acts xxiv, 14-21), 
or Agrippa (Acts xxvi, 8-23), is quoted by Festus 
to the king (Acts xxv, 19), or preaches to the 
philosophers of Athens, writes to the Thessalonians 
and Philippians, or wields his power in the mas- 
terly argument in 1 Cor. xv, his transcendent theme 
is the resurrection. 

Paul preached experience. As we hear the 
apostle plead before the infidel world, he almost 
universally argues the truth of the Word from his 
own living experience. There are some people in 
our Churches to-day who decry emotion, and desire 
the service to be theoretical, quiet, dignified. They 
are like Lady Dedlock in "Bleak House," so per- 
fectly well-bred that if they were to ascend to 
heaven they would desire to do so without any rap- 
ture. When at Jerusalem, in the midst of the 
tumult and on the stairway of the castle, allowed a 
word of defense, he tells the story of his conver- 
sion (Acts xxii). When called before King Agrippa 
he defends his cause by taking refuge in that same 
cherished experience on the road to Damascus. In 
his letter to the Romans his mighty argument is 
sealed in the seventh and eighth chapters by his per- 
sonal testimony to the power of the great principle 



Paul, the Preacher. 135 

he has declared. There was a divine philosophy in 
the plan of our early Methodist itinerants. They 
told what God had done for them with such power 
that villages and forests trembled to their depths 
with the echo of a joyful salvation. So long as the 
tides of human passion remain unchanged, so long 
must religion find its truest province in a heartfelt 
experience. The joy and anguish of the heart are 
the same they were when the Savior prayed amidst 
the gnarled olives of Gethsemane. Men need the 
gospel of emotion to-day as much as in any age of 
the world. 

There is one element of power, reserved for 
final emphasis, which we believe was the true secret 
of Paul's greatness, and whose lesson should to- 
day be heeded by every honest preacher of the 
Word. It is not only his "call" to the ministry, but 
his frequent knowledge of God's direct revelation 
to him. It was the well-drilled mind that said of 
the message, "I neither received it of men, neither 
was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus 
Christ." How clean-cut and strong is the analysis 
of his own power in the sentence, "O, King 
Agrippa, I was not disobedient to the heavenly 
vision !" When he received his commission on the 
Damascus road to preach, Paul threw every win- 



136 The: Certainty of the Kingdom. 

ciow of the soul open heavenward, nor was the log- 
ical mind ashamed to say, "I saw the vision." 
Thereafter heaven's sunlight, mirrored first in his 
honest intellect, was refracted into the hearts of 
men. He felt that God spoke to him. How clear 
is this fact among God's people in every age ! The 
judges were chosen leaders by direct revelation. 
The prophets were those chosen through inner con- 
viction to be the mouthpiece of Jehovah. Their 
first and great mission was not to foretell, but to 
plead with men. God spoke to them, and through 
them. They felt it. They knew it. The lament in 
Eli's day was that there was no open vision. The 
history of the ages proves that religion falls out of 
favor when men fail to see God as Paul saw him. 
The vision of the Almighty is the revelation of in- 
dividual duty. It is the pledge of triumph, the 
secret of power. So long as the burning bush flames 
in sacred story, and we believe God spoke to Moses ; 
so long as Isaiah's lips are touched with the live 
coal from the altar, and the posts move at the voice 
of Jehovah; so long as the word of Paul rings in 
the creeds of the world, or the Son of God cries 
from an ascending chariot, "I am with you," let not 
the vision depart from the men of God. 

Paul bowed for power at the feet of the Son of 



Paul, the Preacher. 137 

God, and then clasped hands with Moses for the 
leadership of the centuries. When we think of him 
now, we do not "hear the swish of the executioner's 
sword, the thud of a falling body, or the dripping of 
blood." He lives. "I have fought a good fight" 
rings out over the field. The tocsin of earth dies. 
The crown descends, and Paul's eternal triumph has 
begun. 



VIII. 
LIFE'S PROCESSION OF THE SEASONS. 

AN AUTUMN HOMIIyY. 

"He shall be like a tree." — Psa. i, 3. 

The: tree seems human, as though related to 
man. Wounded, it bleeds. When healed, it scars. 
It breathes. It bends. It drinks. It dies. You can 
train it, prune it, dwarf it, break it. Plant it in the 
garden of God, and it becomes the type of a right- 
eous life. 

The tree rises above the earth, as if to say: 
"Seek those things that are above/' It flings its 
ripening fruit to the sight of the hungry traveler; 
reaches out its long, laden branches to hold the 
burning sun in its arms, and shield him; throws its 
green sheltering cloak around him, when storm- 
hunted and alone. It bows its graceful courtesy to 
the shrine of the wind, as the ancient Lulabh before 
Israel's altar. Like a coy maiden, it blushes into 
added beauty with the first proposal of winter ; bur- 

138 



Life's Procession of the Seasons. 139 

nishes its leaf in the frost-decked ray of an Octo- 
ber sun, to array itself in the evening dress of the 
seasons. It mourns with the soughing wind in the 
bleak midnight, as if sorrowing for human woe. 
It quietly stands, when the seasons have passed, a 
silent vigil on the bleak journey of life's winter, to 
companion with man in the last sorrows of age; 
then lies down in the silent mold, and stretches its 
long arms over him while he sleeps. 

In the Edenic paradise the tree of good and evil 
stood in the very midst of the garden. In the final 
heaven of Revelation it stands by the river pro- 
ceeding from the throne of God, yielding its leaves 
for the healing of the nations. David planted it 
just inside the gate of his garden of Psalms, where, 
well-watered, it might never die. 

The tree in its natural state, doomed to decay, 
is the type of our visible life ; but, in the figurative 
intent of our text, applies to the righteous man in 
his enduring inner life, by the grace of God. We 
desire to follow the analogy of David's tree in each 
suggestive sphere, applying to man its mingled 
lessons. 

I. The tree that figures the righteous life is 
planted, not of spontaneous growth. 

Human need is the impelling passion toward re- 



140 The; Certainty of the Kingdom. 

ligion, nor have men ever sought God except in 
sorrow, or in the stress of conscious sin. The 
world in all ages has recognized the sin of the heart, 
and sought forgiveness. When Christ came, He 
confirmed the fact of man's need and taught him 
to seek God. Though He made a child the type of 
the kingdom, it was to teach the simplicity of faith. 
He asserted His claim upon conscience, and taught 
men everywhere to repent. The chasms of human 
nature, even in infancy, are suited to nestle the 
storms that when full grown will contend for awful 
mastery on the mountain brow of developed man- 
hood. We must strike at sin, nor be content to 
simulate virtue. Let not the Church commit the 
fatal blunder of saluting the fortresses of evil with 
blank cartridges, instead of with ball and shell. 
Our guns must do execution. Human nature is 
unchanged in its need from the day the Savior was 
shrouded in the agony of Gethsemane to save men. 
It is the same as it was when from Galilee's moun- 
tain He gave the "great commission" to preach the 
Gospel to every creature. Seize the moon by its 
horns, and fling it into space! Tunnel your way 
through the distant sun, and scatter its light into 
the shadows of the universe ! Do something easy ; 
but do not try to make man holy without the 
miraculous aid of the Spirit of God. 



Life's Procession of the Seasons. 141 

This tree, which is well-watered by the irriga- 
tion trench, never lacks, for God's grace is ever 
ready. Nor is it overflowed by an unnatural sup- 
ply. No; it is simply well-watered. Nor is it 
planted in the stream, but by its side, suggesting 
the relation of this earthly life to the kingdom of 
grace. The world in which we live is real, not ideal. 
We are in the midst of life's confusion, its toil, its 
temptations. We are limited by the endowments of 
mind and heart, and the materials of the body. We 
are in the world, though we are not to be of it. Our 
feet press the clods. Our brows are bared to the 
storm. Our hopes and fears strive for uncertain 
mastery in a world whose lightnings gash the mid- 
nights, and whose suns burn the noondays. The 
life of the ascetic is not the life of the Christ. Like 
him we are in a real world, with real temptations, 
whose labors are intense and whose contests are 
never ending. Happy is that one, who, chastened 
by the tempest, has learned to balance every storm 
with the hidden strength of the Almighty. 

II. True to nature's law, the fiber of human 
nature is inherited. Some men are like the oak, 
some the willow, others the bass, the beech, the 
hickory, or the enduring redwood. Some are 
gnarled, some knotted, some straight. Some are 



142 The; Certainty off the Kingdom. 

capable of being polished; some not firm enough to 
take polish. Some are fitted for the beams, the pil- 
lars, the porch, the ark, the altar. None need be fire- 
wood. All may find a place in God's great temple, 
if ability will be content in its sphere. 

The limits of birth, and the laws of inherited 
culture, are stronger than death. They survived 
our ancestors, live in us, and will dominate the gen- 
erations yet to be. Heaven is not equally gained, nor 
hell attained. With swift or tardy step, he walks the 
ways of fame, whose grandfather thrived or lived 
in vain. The frown of the father, the smile 
of the mother, their love, their hate, are alike 
mingled in the life of the child. Some are born 
with a nature inclined to love, while some must 
grapple as in death-struggle with themselves for 
passion's mastery. If men could see that their 
habits of thought, and even their moods of mind, 
are bequeathed to their children, years would be 
too short for noble deeds, and a single hour too long 
for malicious sport. 

Yes ! Life seems fixed in the fiber of its inherit- 
ance, so that the fruit-tree can never grace a lawn, 
nor a shade-tree lift its luscious fruit to the kiss of 
the sunlight. The limits of inheritance hedge the 
way. They can not, however, defeat the power of 



Life's Procession of the Seasons. 143 

grace. God is able to graft the new life of love 
upon the wild olive-tree, and cause it to yield the 
peaceable fruits of the kingdom of Christ. 

III. Though the tree breathes through the leaf, 
yet, through the root it gathers its greatest strength 
from the hidden source. 

There are two trees in every nature ; one grow- 
ing downward, the other upward; one destined to 
fruitage, the other doomed to darkness and toil. 
Should you grasp the trunk, and shake both earth 
and leaves from it, you could scarcely tell which 
grappled the clods, and which the clouds. So must 
it ever be with human character. Well did Paul 
say: "Your life is hid with Christ in God." 
Thought, reflection, meditation, self-examination, 
the inward balancing of motives and desires, secret 
communion with the Infinite Spirit, and the review 
of coming destiny; these are the secrets of a true 
life. The hurrying hoofs of war chargers are ever 
clattering our streets. The bloodthirsty cries of 
either injured or remorseless passion are ever 
drenching our ears. The wild tumult of both pleas- 
ure and pain distract thought, distort reason, and 
confuse the mind. No man can be strong, nor be- 
come stable, who does not open the windows of the 
soul heavenward in the hours of seclusion, that he 



144 The: Certainty of the: Kingdom. 

may talk with God. It was in the secluded room, 
from his studio, that Angelo gathered his inspira- 
tion, to come forth, to put into marble the great 
thoughts that live. Every great mind has learned 
to dwell apart with God before he has lived in the 
world's highest honors. 

The tree grows from within. It reaches out to 
gather earth and air, through root and leaf, to build 
from within, its towering trunk in expanding cir- 
cles. Man never grows by wrapping flesh and 
blood in cloaks of wool, but by the law of inner as- 
similation. When will the world learn that God is 
only truly known in man's inner nature ! "No man 
:climbs to the throne of God by the pathway of the 
stars, who has not first faced Him in the inner sanc- 
tuary of his own soul." Augustine, after his long- 
struggle with speculative doubt, at last with wonder 
and joy found God revealing Himself within his 
own soul. Hear his confession : "Too late I loved 
Thee, O Beauty, ancient yet ever new ! Too late I 
loved Thee. I searched for Thee abroad, and Thou 
wert within. I, deluded, abroad, plunging amid 
those fair forms which Thou hast made. Thou 
wert with me, but I was not with Thee. Things 
held me far from Thee, which unless they were in 
Thee, were not at all. Thou didst call, and shout, 



Lite's Procession oe the Seasons. 145 

and burst my deafness. Thou didst flash, shine, 
and scatter my blindness. Thou didst breathe odors 
and I drew in breath and panted for Thee. Thou 
touchedst me, and I burned for Thy peace." 

IV. The tree, by the river, brought forth "its 
fruit in its season." When the Savior pronounced 
the curse upon the fig-tree, He did not say, "Wither 
away," but, "No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for- 
ever." It required but one day to wither and begin 
to die. Alas for those inactive pretenders who ask 
a place in the kingdom of God, but whose withered, 
shriveled branches of many days are doomed to 
burn! 

Close to this thought lies the missionary lesson 
of the tree. It neither robs its neighbor nor par- 
takes of its own fruit. It reaches it to the passer-by. 
It rounds it, and ripens it ; then holds it in extended 
hand, refusing, like David in Adullam's cave, to 
drink of the proffered cup. Even its fragrance is 
distilled alike upon owner or careless visitor. Go 
to the tree, thou self-centered Christian, and learn 
the missionary thought of nature. The earth, the 
air, the sea, yield their treasures without stint, 
while the sun burns to bathe the universe in its 
light. The man who despises Christian missions is 
out of harmony with the genius of the Gospel, heaps 
10 



146 The; Certainty o£ the; Kingdom. 

contempt on its author, and rejects the companion- 
ship of the Man of Nazareth. 

V. The leaf in the green, the bud, the fruit, the 
autumn tint, the unleaved skeleton, all remind us of 
life's procession of the seasons. 

Which season of the year do you like the best? 

Spring? As it casts its fragrance to the air, 
whitens tree and earth with its blossoms of prom- 
ise, sends thought into hidden channels of investi- 
gation, and welcomes man to the opening page of 
nature ! 

Or is summer noblest ? When the golden waves 
of ripening grain bow with the passing breeze, as 
if a flying messenger had signaled with deft wand a 
concert worship of the sun! The doors are flung 
upon their hinges. Our artificial cells are deserted, 
while man lives under the arch of blue. Fruits are 
ripe — harvest is here. The swish in the grain 
mingles with the shouts of the workers; till the 
summer, weary, rests its head in the lap of the 
autumn. Yes, the summer is beautiful and we 
sometimes sing, The summer of the soul would last 
all the year. 

But autumn is the time of gayer hours. The 
abundant stores are gathered for the coming cold. 
The welkin's ring of harvest home is heard. The 



Life's Procession of the Seasons. 147 

south wind journeys by the west, and brings the 
;cool, bracing air. Steps are more elastic and spirits 
more buoyant. The richly decked draperies of 
clouds of gold and blue float by like angel chariots, 
while from out their mists come notes of lark and 
nightingale. Plains are beautiful ; mountains dim 
in the blue haze of the hunting season. Nature, in 
most gorgeous hue, is robed and crowned for the 
triumphal procession of the seasons. Hours are 
tinged with melancholy. The heart is touched with 
forebodings. Yet no day is ever so beautiful be- 
sides as the perfect October day. 

Possibly some love the winter best, when bells 
jingle, hoofs clatter, and the rollicking laugh goes 
bounding from lip to lip, while tingling frost paints 
the cheek and cheers the heart. The glowing fire 
circles the home around its light, and the long win- 
ter evenings are the happiest of all the year. 

Yes! There is a springtime of youth, a har- 
vest of labor, an autumn of wisdom, and a winter 
of age. 

How happy is childhood ! Care traces no fur- 
row. The artless spirits rush to greet the first rays 
of the morning. The day is spent in thoughtless 
pleasure, in games and sports, beguiling joys to 
eye, and lip, and tongue, till life seems a huge joke, 



148 Ths Certainty of the: Kingdom. 

and all nature a storehouse of fun. Then at night 
to be tucked to sleep by mother's hand, receive the 
stroke of her anxious interest on forehead and face, 
and fall to sleep while love bathes the tired spirit, 
and life is forgotten in needed rest! How often 
in the perplexing duties of manhood we would fly 
for relief, were we able, to the guileless days of 
childhood. We say in our weariness : 

" Backward, flow backward, O tide of the years ! 
I am so weary of toil and of tears, — 
Toils without recompense, tears all in vain, — 
Take them, and give me my childhood again." 

Yet youth is long. The years are slow. Education 
will never be done, and the reason for toil is never 
plain. 

Early maturity seems happier. Bravery buoys 
the soul till its emotions are godlike and its con- 
scious life a priceless boon. Yet, when all should be 
as merry as a marriage bell, unrequited love or per- 
plexing wonder vexes life's happiest hours. The 
uncertainties of life's problems and wavering 
choices dash the soul into the disquiet of a ship, 
well ballasted, but in a storm at sea. 

More eloquent still are vigorous manhood and 
womanhood, giving battle to the elements. The 
home built ; the wee prattlers stretching out their 



Lite's Procession of the Seasons. 149 

hands to the home-comer, talking the "goo-goo" 
infant language, which love alone interprets; be- 
griming face, and putting fingers in mouth and 
hair, laughing at the confusion created ; while those 
of a little older growth iron out the troubled fore- 
head with a new conundrum, and, by a challenge 
of wits, make the despondent bread-winner glad he 
is alive. The buoyant joy of a home ascending the 
hill, where love reigns and plenty prevails — that is 
heaven itself. I would I might stay there a thou- 
sand years. 

But the years pass. The step unconsciously 
grows a little slower. For the first time in life, one 
feels slightly weary. He is reminded that the sus- 
tained plateau of life's rugged vigor begins to dip 
for the slope toward the river. Yet, the mellow 
years are richer in wisdom. Ambition is tempered 
with kindness. Friendships are more valued. The 
associates of the harvest time come more and more 
to mind. Life yields its richer inspiration. Its In- 
dian Summer is here. Yet the autumn forebodes the 
shadows of age. The Indian Summer gives place 
to the thought of winter. The smile of old age is 
always tinged with sadness. The laugh gives warn- 
ing of the coming tear. If serene, age is beautiful. 
Yet no one of us desires to grow old. Age brings 



150 Ths Certainty of the; Kingdom. 

sorrow. Then comes the pall, the shroud, the 
windowless tomb ! 

Some time since I stepped into an establish- 
ment, and there met the husband and wife, both 
past middle life. I said, ."I hope you are having a 
most happy Christmas and holiday time." "O, very 
moderate," she replied; and he added, "We have 
gotten to the place in life where we do n't care much 
about living." Shall declining age feel there is no 
resting place this side the grave? Must man toil 
on till pick, and pen, and hope drop like seared 
leaves into the chasm? Is man a deserted waif, 
hope foiled, faith benumbed, helpless, defenseless, 
alone ? 

In early summer I have seen the ripening har- 
vest rolling, billowing in the sunlight, till nature it- 
self seemed to laugh at the sight. But when the 
winnowing fan and threshing whirl had done their 
work, there was but little wheat, amidst flying chaff 
and pretentious cheat. How often the apples are 
gnarled, the corn blasted, the vintage stung, the 
winepress clogged, the harvest home a dirge ! Un- 
happy old age! Could anything be more sad? 

This is not the Psalmist's thought in the prom- 
ise, "Its leaf shall not wither," nor is it the intended 
law of nature. The flower is most beautiful when 



Life's Procession of the Seasons. 151 

in fullest bloom, the fields most graceful when the 
stalk bends under the waving grain. The fruit is 
only rich in hue when mellow with advancing 
weeks. Nature is decked in Joseph's coat, unlike 
the ancient dreamer, when touched with age. The 
cataract knots its stream, scatters its spray and leaps 
with highest glee, when joining the emerald, ebbing 
flood at its feet. The rainbow spans retreating 
storms. The sun washes with gold the western 
slope set with clouds at evening time. Music is 
most enchanting when breaking in final peals. All 
nature gathers her forces through earlier months 
to rush on to the climax of the autumnal season. 
Eternity graces mortality, and heaven crowns time. 
The law of nature is perfection in maturity, nor 
is man alone to fail! No! Age, by the grace of 
God, is the time of serenest pleasure. No vexing 
toil to plan for an uncertain future; no blinding, 
carping criticism to dull the feelings of love; no 
fear of disappointed hope; the memory of a life 
well spent; the knowledge of duty done; the sense 
of hallowed love linking to the bosom of God ; con- 
science at rest, and faith triumphant; honored of 
children, blessed of friends, loved by all ; no finding 
of fault, no slighting of worth, no rebellion against 
God, no fear of death! Serene and pure in the 



152 The: Certainty of the: Kingdom. 

light of love — at home in either world! What a 
life ! May God give it you all ! 

The Psalmist, in the triumph of an ancient faith, 
made more glorious in the light of the newer dis- 
pensation, flings out the challenge to the wild tumult 
of the years, and shouts till all heaven rings in 
response to the glad acclaim, His leaf shall never 
wither. 

At twenty we are buoyant, at thirty confident, at 
forty strong, at fifty true, at sixty wise, at seventy 
pure — then transplanted from earth's sod to the 
Garden of God. 



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